Naruto 1. Prologue

Prologue

o

Blood.

He could smell it everywhere. On him, on the burning buildings around him, leaking out of the body of the last of his childhood friends not far from him… it was even in the mud that he was lying in. Something cold and wet hit his face, causing him to stir and beginning to bring him back to his senses. Was it raining too? He couldn't remember when it had started…

It was strange, even the rain seemed to smell of blood, though that was impossible… or at least improbable.

He could smell the fire too. The burnt stench of wood slowly being reduced to ash, a hint of sulfur being carried in the smoke as the buildings, walls, and even citizens of his village burned around him.

Slowly he became aware of the sounds reaching his ears. The creaking of the buildings as their support beams burned away and more and more weight was placed on boards and beams that weren't meant to hold so much… the pitter-patter of rain – or blood – sprinkling down from the heavens and landing in the puddles made in the small potholes of the road… the cries and screams of those watching their friends, family members, or even complete strangers being massacred… the battle cries of their enemies who had at long last overrun them… a rasping sound that he couldn't immediately identify until he realized that it was the sound of his own breath laboriously being pushed in and out of punctured lungs, carrying the scent of still more blood to his nose as it pushed against the mud on his face… and the laughing.

As much as he hated the other sounds, it was the laughing that he hated the most. It mocked him for his failures that day and in days past. The sound of his friend's laughter coming out in a manner that Sasuke had never used before…

Though it was little more than a whisper, it roared in his ears, drowning out everything else.

"Ku ku ku…"

It wasn't even a real laugh he realized, just the sound of amusement. A sound that was designed to make those who heard it realize that they were hopelessly outmatched and that their enemy didn't even feel it was worth the trouble of actually laughing at their wasted efforts. To let them know that they would soon die, just as their friends had, just as their teachers had, just as hundreds – maybe even thousands – had before them.

Lying broken and defeated at the feet of Orochimaru.

Slowly Naruto lifted his head from the mud, spitting blood from his swollen lips and pushed his long blond hair away from his face so he could look at the snake-like eyes peering down at him from Sasuke's face.

Orochimaru in Sasuke's body was a horror than even his most terrifying nightmares couldn't eclipse. Perhaps it seemed even worse because for a short while he'd been allowed to believe that it wouldn't happen as he'd spent years fearing it would. He'd thought that Sasuke had defeated the Sannin, that the danger had passed, but, like a parasite Orochimaru was lying dormant within the Uchiha, slowly gaining more and more power until he was ready to take over and when he was, it happened almost instantly. One day there were reports that Sasuke had taken over the Sound and was searching for Akatsuki – or at least Itachi – and the next thing he knew Orochimaru had miraculously returned. He'd thought that he might get his friend back, that Sasuke and he would meet up in their search for Itachi, and while they did meet, Sasuke was even more changed than he'd been during the previous attempt to rescue him. He led his own team now, for his own reasons, and he didn't want anything to do with his friends from the past. He eluded them that day, disappearing while they were distracted by other battles and by the news that Jiraiya had been killed.

Itachi was found dead in a long forgotten Uchiha hideout, his eyes plucked out of his skull, and Naruto had thought – _hoped_ – that Sasuke would return to them, that having accomplished his goal of killing his brother, he'd come back to rebuild his clan. It didn't happen. Naruto never found out if it was the Orochimaru-infected Kabuto who managed to transfer the Sannin into Sasuke's body or if Orochimaru himself was still alive inside of Sasuke after their battle, but news soon trickled out of the Rice Country that Orochimaru had returned and that he now possessed the body of the last known Uchiha.

After that, it wasn't long before Orochimaru and the Sound began to use his new body to take over several countries. They made treaties with stronger – but just as ambitious – countries, attacking mutual enemies until the Sound was strong enough to break the treaty (or had found another country to ally with) and then turn on their former allies. In just a few short years, the map of the continent had been redrawn, with the once-small Rice Country now dominating the majority of the continent.

Conventional wisdom was that it would take Orochimaru years to consolidate his power within his enlarged country, that the ninja of the other nations would rebel against him so that he was forced to constantly put down new rebellions, but conventional wisdom didn't seem to apply to Orochimaru. The ninja of the conquered were all too happy to accept their new leader and their new title of Sound-nin. Because of this, his forces only seemed to grow stronger the more he used them.

No nation was safe, but Konoha had always been the real target and had always known it. Perhaps, had it not been for Akatsuki and the more immediate threat they posed, Konoha could have used a preemptive attack against Orochimaru to save themselves or at least concentrated on preparing for the war that they could see coming. Unfortunately they didn't have the man power to fight the shadowy organization that threatened the world and Orochimaru and his allies. By the time Akatsuki was dealt with, the Sound was too strong to attack directly and all of their attempts to prepare for the war served merely to delay the inevitable.

As the Sound's power grew, the Leaf's shrank until it was nothing but a shadow of its former self. Soon the Sound had the power to crush Orochimaru's village of birth, but it waited until its victory was absolutely assured. The Sannin had learned from past mistakes. He took no ally with him when he finally attacked the Fire Country; he relied on none but his own followers and his own power.

Naruto knew that Konoha's ninja were better trained and generally more powerful than their Sound counterparts, but they were not nearly numerous enough to pull out a miraculous victory. It was because of this that he had hunted down the body of his former friend amongst the burning ruins of the village he loved. He knew he had to cut off the head so that the body would die.

But after nearly twenty minutes of fighting, it had become clear that it wasn't going to happen.

Naruto had long since learned that good didn't always triumph over evil and that even when it did the price was often almost more than he could bear. It was hard to say when he'd let go of his childish assumptions of how the world worked or of his belief that if he just tried hard enough he could do anything. Probably it had started with Jiraiya's death or maybe it even went back to the day when Sasuke left the village. Somewhere in there, he'd had to grow up and see just how terrible and frightening a world he really lived in. Even with those losses, he'd tried to push through, of course, but it grew harder and harder. As his friends were needed on more and more dangerous missions, the odds began to catch up with them and there seemed to be nothing he could do to hold onto them.

The seeming inevitability of his precious people's deaths was a hard thing to accept and it only got harder as the body count piled up. They weighed on him day and night and the faces of those he'd lost haunted his dreams until he was only a shadow of the young man he'd once been. The hardest of all of them, the one that really left him broken, wasn't one of the first or the latest, but she was definitely the most important. Sakura, his best friend, his teammate, perhaps the only woman he'd ever really loved, died in his arms after a failed mission to kill the body that had once belonged to their best friend and in a way, Naruto died with her. He'd never forgiven himself for it and never really gotten over it despite the best efforts of his surviving friends. And then they too began to be killed. Sometimes it was in a large battle, other times it was just on a simple mission. They died protecting him, they died because of missions he assigned to them, they died because of missions they took despite his efforts to keep them away from danger.

And on top of all that, the village that he loved so much was also dying. The battles, the wars, the sneak attacks, they all took their toll on the once beautiful and peaceful village. He wouldn't be able to save it, just as he hadn't been able to save Sasuke or Sakura or any of the others. Now, the one chiefly responsible for all those losses and thousands more was merely staring down at him with a fond expression that seemed misplaced on Sasuke's face as he watched Naruto pull himself up from the muck… all the while making that annoying sound.

"Ku ku ku…"

"Shut up," Naruto growled as he wearily brought his hands up in front of him while blood red mud dripped from them. He could feel the kyuubi's power welling up inside of him, begging to be released, but he refused to give in to it. The fox's power was a double edged sword and in a fight like this, he couldn't afford to lose control. Kyuubi would give him power, but he wouldn't be able to think anymore and he wasn't so sure even Kyuubi's power would even the playing field… at least not a semi-controllable amount of Kyuubi's power. He supposed he could let the demon out completely. That would at least slow Orochimaru down, but Kyuubi would destroy the village anyway so nothing would be gained.

"You've lost, Naruto-kun," Sasuke's voice chuckled, "just give up and I'll make your death quick."

"If there was any of Sasuke left in there, you'd know I don't do that," Naruto growled, hoping that he wasn't lying.

"Look around you," Orochimaru laughed, waving a hand at the burning buildings and the dead bodies all around them. "You still want to be Hokage? You still think you can be Hokage? By the end of the day, there won't be a village left to be Hokage of!"

"There are more important things than being Hokage," Naruto countered with more confidence than he actually felt. "Once I've killed you, it won't matter that you tried to burn the village to the ground, Kohona will live on… the Spirit of Fire will keep burning!"

The Sannin shook his head and ran a hand through his long, dark hair, brushing it away from his face as his head rolled lazily to the side and his lips curled upward in a mocking smile. "You're just as naive as Jiraiya was."

Nartuo tensed at the mention of his dead teacher and friend.

Orochimaru's yellow, snake-like eyes grew hard as they focused in on the blond ninja. "I'll show you how wrong you are, just as I showed him…" He closed his eyes for the briefest of seconds and whispered, "Sharingan!" When he opened them again they were the color of blood and the oh-so-familiar three tomoe could clearly be seen, even from a distance.

For a moment, Naruto was back at the Valley of the End, trying to stop his friend from going to Orochimaru. Until he'd tapped into Kyuubi's powers, he'd been helpless against Sasuke's eyes then. There was only one way to defeat a Sharingan user and that was through speed. The amount of insight the bloodline limit gave its users was unbelievable, but speed countered it. If you were faster than the one using the Sharingan, you could still win.

Naruto was fast.

He was incredibly fast.

But he was not faster than Orochimaru, not enough to beat a Sharingan anyway. The fight had been over before, now it was… whatever came after 'over.'

Naruto's only option was to use Kyuubi, to hell with the dangers and the consequences. His mind would no longer be clear once he allowed the demon's chakra into his system, techniques would be thrown by the way side in favor of animal instincts, and the demon would hunger for more and more control until it had completely taken over. Once he started down that path, he would keep going until only death surrounded him or something snapped him out of it. He'd come close to killing friends while in that state… he had ripped Jiraiya's chest open and thought nothing of it… but his friends were all gone, his village was falling apart around him, and he was surrounded by enemies. Perhaps it was time to let the monster within him out to play.

"You look scared, Naruto-kun," the snake Sannin taunted, "but you don't know fear, not yet… my Sharingan hasn't gotten to the _scary_ part yet!"

Orochimaru slowly brought his hands up in front of his face, pinky and ring fingers laced together, middle fingers raised and pressing against each other with his index fingers bent, touching tip to tip. His hands remained like that for only a second and Naruto knew it was just long enough to draw more chakra to his eyes, he'd seen that movement done dozens of times in the past.

"Mangekyo Sharingan!"

In an instant, Naruto's eyes were on Orochimaru's feet. He'd faced Itachi and Madara, he knew what the Mangekyo was capable of and he couldn't help but smile. There was still a chance to win and he might not even need Kyuubi to pull it out.

The Mangekyo Sharingan was immensely powerful, but it took even more power to use it. It wrecked the user's eyesight and depleted chakra reserves at an astonishing rate. He'd picked Kakashi up off the ground often enough to know that.

If Orochimaru was going to use such a wasteful move against someone who knew how to fight it, there was still a chance.

"What are you looking at, Naruto-kun?" Sasuke's voice with Orochimaru's accents asked. "There's no need to look away, it's always better to see your death coming… or so I would imagine."

"You're forgetting who beat Madara," Naruto countered, "I know how to fight the Mangekyo Sharingan."

"_Tobi_ was no longer the person he'd once been, but I suppose I should thank you for that," Orochimaru chuckled. "Had it not been for you and your friends' efforts, Akatsuki might have made things difficult for me. Of course, I managed to beat Itachi for you, so I'd call us even.

"You didn't beat Itachi, Sasuke did," Naruto snapped back. "He didn't need your help to do it either, he would have gotten there by himself if he'd stayed with his friends."

Orochimaru smirked and shook his head. "I _am_ Sasuke and Sasuke is me. _We_ killed Itachi. Even as he fought him, Sasuke could feel me growing inside of him, becoming stronger and stronger, reaching the point where I would take control… but that hardly matters now, does it? Let's stop worrying about the past, because I've already killed you. Your past, your future, they're gone, because looking down doesn't save you from _this_ Sharingan… just as it didn't save Deidara's arm when he fought you and my little tool Kakashi."

In spite of himself, Naruto's eyes flickered up to Orochimaru's and then he couldn't look away. The three tomoe had become three sickles, connecting where the Sannin's pupil had once been. Naruto had seen this variation of the Mangekyo Sharingan before as well, but it had only been used on enemies of the Leaf.

It was Kakashi's ultimate trump card.

The world around him suddenly seemed to melt, as if it had been nothing more than a chalk painting on the sidewalk that was now being washed away by the rain. Naruto tried to back away, tried to move in any direction, but his feet refused to respond. The world around him was all bleeding towards him, the bodies on the ground, the mud, the rain, the burning buildings; all of it was collapsing in on him.

There really was only one chance now, only one possible thing that could turn the fight around. It would be his final attack, because he would be no more once it was done, but perhaps it would be worth it. Orochimaru could not be allowed to survive. The Sound could not be allowed to continue to subjugate the rest of the continent. Anything was better than letting that happen.

Anything…

Naruto could feel the demon now, deep inside him, howling to be released. All it took was a simple closing of his eyes and he was back in the darkened tunnel, standing in the knee deep water before the huge gate. It was hard to be sure, but Naruto thought Kyuubi almost looked pleased to see him after so many years of being studiously ignored.

No words passed between them, the demon simply smiled as Naruto hung his head and stepped up to the bars. His trembling hand reached up and grabbed the seal upon the cage and pulled it away. There was an awful cry of delight from within the cage as the doors burst open and Kyuubi stepped out, finally free. Naruto didn't even flinch as the two giant paws closed around him.

"NOW YOU WILL SEE TRUE POWER," the demon promised.

Naruto's eyes fluttered open as he reawakened in the real world. He could already feel his body and mind detaching from each other as the demon within him began to take control. Perhaps it was because the seal was no more or maybe it was a side effect of the Mangekyo Sharingan, but he could feel everything that was happening to his body with perfect clarity. Orochimaru's attack was now crushing and pulling his body apart as the vortex sucked him every deeper within it. For a brief second, he thought it was the most painful thing he'd ever experienced.

And then Kyuubi's chakra exploded from within him and he found out just how wrong he'd been. Naruto threw his head back and screamed as every muscle in his body simultaneously contracted with such force that he heard his own spine snap only to instantly heal. His whisker marks grew wider and darker as the brilliant blue drained from his eyes and was replaced by the deepest of reds, his canines lengthened and sliced into his swollen lips, drawing a stream of blood that fell from his face and was caught up in the vortex and swirled around him like a halo. Red chakra blazed thickly around him, forming a second skin that burned his body. As his scream died, his breath came out in short, quick gasps, with low growls interrupting every few seconds.

"You're too late," Orochimaru taunted. "You should have let the kyuubi out earlier because at this point you're already dead!"

Kyuubi-Naruto knew he was right, they were already trapped in the dimensional rift, from which escape was impossible. The Jinchuuriki snarled and threw his hand forward as the vortex swallowed him up and collapsed, but the clawed chakra hand of the kyuubi continued forward even as Orochimaru's attack finished its work. The Sannin's eyes widened for just a moment and then the claws sank into them.

Through the tiny pinprick of the real world that he could still see, Naruto saw Orochimaru fall to his knees, clutching at his eyes and screaming in pain and anger. The red chakra wavered and then vanished as the vortex expanded outward uncontrolled, swallowing even the last of the great Sanin. When Kakashi had used the Mangekyo Sharingan, he'd been able to precisely aim and contain the space-time warp, but Orochimaru's seemed to be out of control… or maybe it was simply that from inside the vortex everything seemed to be collapsing in on him.

There was no way to know and it didn't really matter anymore.

_'It's not fair,'_ Naruto thought, not even finding it odd that he was once again in control of his body and mind, as he watched Sasuke's body twist and deform, _'It shouldn't have been this way…If I had just done things differently… none of this would have happened.'_ It was so easy to look back, to remember those times when things were simpler, and to see all of those unknowing mistakes that would eventually become the problems that destroyed his village.

His eyes began to glaze over as images passed in front of them, battles against the Sound, meetings with the Village Council, watching Hinata's marriage, the losses of his friends, the death of Sakura, destroying Akatsuki, fighting Itachi… from there the images began to move faster than his mind could keep up with. He managed to make out the fight against the immortal Akatsuki members, and then meeting Sai for the first time, training with Jiraiya, meeting Tsunade, the Forest of Death, the Wave Country, and finally the day he'd been placed on Team Seven…

He wished he could start over again, to grab that young idiot posturing and boasting by the ear and knock some sense into him, to be more of a friend to everyone around him from the get go, to not waste time thinking about how amazing he was (especially since he _wasn't_)… but there was no time for that, it was the past, it was out of reach…

And then, everything went black as Naruto's body was torn to shreds by the gravitational pull of the vortex.

Once more, Orochimaru had come out on top.

o

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	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

o

It had long been known among the Hokage's guards that Uzumaki Naruto suffered from nightmares and that rushing into the office every time he cried out in terror would only wear you out and earn you a frightening glare – one that was even worse than the glare they received if they accidentally called him "Hokage-sama." Most ninja had nightmares at some point, it was impossible to see and do the things that they were occasionally required to do without being affected in some way, but Naruto's seemed more persistent than was usual.

Konohamaru, when he thought Naruto was out of earshot, had theorized that the loss of so many friends had a more powerful effect on Naruto because he had gone so long without them as a child. He and others had heard Naruto proclaim that he would protect his precious people often enough to know how important it was to the village leader and it seemed clear to him that when Naruto inevitably hadn't been able to protect everyone it had wounded him in a place that wouldn't heal quickly, if ever.

Naruto had overheard those comments and had informed Konohamaru that if he had time to discuss another person's dreams – which were not really as bad as everyone tried to claim – perhaps he should be given a few extra missions.

It was on one of those extra missions that Konohamaru and his team had been ambushed and…

Naruto's brilliant blue eyes snapped open and then instantly shut again as he moaned in protest over the brightness of the room and the immense headache that erupted the moment he became fully aware of what was going on around him. "Damn Sakaba," the blond groaned, "he knows he's supposed to cut me off before I get too drunk!"

His voice sounded strange in his ears, more high pitched than he was used to, but he brushed it off as the lingering influences of the sake and tried to sit up. For some reason he'd put more strength into the movement than he'd intended and ended up nearly smashing his face into his knees.

_'How much did that bastard let me drink last night?'_ he wondered as he slowly opened his eyes once more and tried to acclimate them to the light. As the blurry shapes around him slowly came into focus his eyes widened in alarm…

…and then promptly snapped shut against the pain from the light.

Where the hell was he? If he'd ended up in some barmaid's room, he was going to be really pissed… which was funny, when he thought about it, because getting pissed was probably what got him into this position in the first place. If Jiraiya were still alive, he'd be laughing his ass off at his poor student. Of course, that would be preferable to what Sakura would have done to him if she wasn't…

Naruto ruthlessly squashed that train of thought and opened his eyes again. He had more important things to think about than the ghosts of the past. With another groan he reached up to brush his long blond hair back, but instead punched himself in the eye.

"Damn it…" he grumbled as the blow seemed to double the headache he was already suffering through. With his hand on his face, it was easy just to slide it up to his hair, but what he found there shocked him even more than his lack of coordination.

Normally his hair hung down around his shoulders, its natural spikiness remaining but losing the battle against gravity. As he'd started letting it grow, Sakura had commented that he looked good with longer hair and so he'd kept it even when it started to annoy him. This morning, however, it was short again, very short. He probably hadn't had hair this length since before he'd gone off to train with Jiraiya.

'_What sort of sick bastard cuts a man's hair while he's sleeping?'_ Naruto wondered and then an even more troubling thought struck him. _'What sort of _confident_, sick bastard cuts the most powerful ninja in the village's hair while he's sleeping?' _

Naruto could count the number of people who could get away with something like this on one finger and she'd never do anything like that even if she thought he was letting it get a little too long; Hinata just wasn't that sort of person. Kiba might have done it before he'd…

Well, back then Kiba wasn't exactly one to talk about keeping one's hair trimmed anyway. With a sigh, Naruto waved his hand through the air as if warding of the spirits of the dead and then looked around the sparsely decorated room.

It didn't _look_ like the sort of room a barmaid would keep, but perhaps he was seriously overestimating her. The bland, whitish colored paint was chipped and peeling off the wall, though it looked like someone had attempted to cover up the worst of it with either glue or tape. Of course, taping paint to a wall didn't really seem to help too much, but he couldn't deny that an effort had been made to make the place look almost nice.

A wasted effort, but an effort nonetheless.

There was a small, half-dead plant that was either recovering from near death or heading towards it and had probably been pulled out of a dumpster at some point given the condition of the pot it was resting it. A few ramen posters decorated the walls along with little scrolls upon which random slogans were drawn in sloppy – almost illegible – kanji, no doubt covering up more peeling paint. Naruto had had a few such ramen posters on his own walls as a child and knew that they were free if you sent in enough proofs of purchase to different ramen companies which meant that whoever had brought him here at least had good taste… and maybe even some extra ramen they'd be willing to part with.

He sighed at the nostalgic thought of ramen. It had been so long since he'd last enjoyed a nice steaming bowl of his favorite food. As his mouth watered with the memory his eyes shifted to the window and his heart nearly stopped. Where was he? The view from the window was of a peaceful village in the middle of a normal day. It looked sort of the way Konoha once had, years and years ago.

_'Actually,'_ Naruto thought as he leaned towards the window and stared in awe at the world outside, _'it looks __a lot__ like Konoha used to.'_ He watched for a moment longer and then turned his attention back to the room, his eyes suddenly alert and the pain from his headache pushed into the back of his mind. Something was wrong. This room felt extremely familiar, but at the same time felt misplaced, as if he wasn't supposed to be there.

At that moment he heard a door open in an adjoining room and the sounds of footsteps entering. In an instant he had thrown the sheets covering him aside and was reaching for a weapon as he jumped out of bed…

…or at least tried to. Instead, he ended up falling flat on his face when his feet didn't hit the ground when they were supposed to.

"Crap," he grumbled as he rolled onto his back and tried to rub his nose only to hit himself in the mouth as he once again failed to properly move his limbs. It was quickly becoming apparent that he'd been drugged or had some sort of nerve damage that Kyuubi's healing powers weren't feeling up to fixing.

Had he been attacked by some enemy the previous night when he was staggering home after leaving the bar? Had he been kidnapped somehow?

Those ideas seemed incredibly unlikely. The village council had assigned ANBU members to watch over him when he left the Hokage Tower – despite his objections to the precautions – and even drunk he would have been more than a match for the majority of people who'd like to kill him. He was the strongest person in the village, _unofficially_ the Hokage, the leader of the village no matter how much the council hated to admit it, and arguably stronger than any other _official_ Hokage that had come before him, why did he need guards?

The council, however, had insisted, pointing out that he could be removed from his position – which Naruto highly doubted – if he refused to cooperate with those charged with running the village; namely: them. It was moments like those were he truly understood why Tsunade-baachan had been so reluctant to take the name Hokage and why Jiraiya had outright refused it, and those two hadn't even had to deal with a council full of people that still hated them for something sealed in their bodies when they were babies.

Hinata chided him when he said it out loud, but he longed for the day when the older generation finally died out so his few surviving peers – who accepted him for who he was – could take over the council positions.

He strained his ears and remained perfectly still on the floor, listening for any sound that would tell him if his captors had heard him, but their faint conversation continued without pause.

With a grunt of unexpected exertion, Naruto sat up and slowly climbed to his feet, still wondering why his body felt so strange. Sai and Shikamaru would probably have told him that he'd be better off staying in bed and letting whoever was out there come to him. Actually, Sai would have asked something stupid like whether or not Naruto still had balls and Shikamaru would have rolled his eyes and muttered "troublesome" if they were still around, but they hadn't been for a long time, so Naruto was free to do whatever he wanted without being criticized for it. If the voices belonged to enemies, they weren't going to stay out there forever without checking up on him and if they were friends it would be better to meet them standing up than lying on the floor. He'd never had a lot of patience and he hated looking weak in front of others so he was going to go and see what was going on and either kick someone's ass for cutting his hair or kick someone's ass for kidnapping him _and_ cutting his hair.

As he pulled himself up to his full height he again felt like something was off. The whole room seemed to be set up as an optical illusion because he felt shorter than he knew he was when he looked around. Either that or the room had been made for a very tall person with everything proportioned for his added height. Doing something like that seemed a pointless waste of energy to Naruto, since it was just as easy to duck one's head, but who was he to criticize the eccentricities of others?

He carefully shuffled his feet across the floor heading towards the door and hoping to avoid another fall until his body began acting normal again. When he reached the doorway, he grabbed the handle that was at mid-chest level when it felt like it should have been closer to his waist, but as he started to turn it, the voices on the other side began to speak again – and this time he could actually make out what they were saying.

"So, this is Naruto's house, huh?" a lazy, slightly muffled voice asked.

Naruto's breath caught in his throat, causing him to cough as he swallowed badly. He _knew_ that voice and it wasn't supposed to be a voice that was around anymore, Kakashi had been dead for almost a decade. The blond ninja's jaw flexed as he squashed the emotions trying to rise up within him. It was probably just his ears playing tricks on him. The voices were coming through a door and possibly through masks as well, there was no reason to imitate Kakashi since Naruto knew without a shadow of a doubt that his former mentor was dead.

He'd been the one who killed him, after all.

"He's a moron, but I think giving him to you is best. You have a good nose for these types."

The second voice seemed familiar as well, but Naruto couldn't think of where he'd heard it before, if he ever had. Regardless, these two were underestimating him, thinking he could just be handed over to someone like it was nothing. They were about to see that even with his body drugged or injured Uzumaki Naruto was no one to be trifled with.

"Plus you—"

Naruto turned the handle and pushed the door open, his muscles already tensing as they prepared to launch him either at his attackers or behind some cover if anything was thrown at him. "Alright you bastards just wh—"

His voice died on his lips as he caught sight of the "bastards" who were both staring at him as if he were the strangest thing they'd ever seen. One was older, with wizened features and a grey goatee. A finely carved wooden pipe that he had probably been smoking was hanging precariously from his opened mouth, a thin trail of smoke still rising from it. Most importantly, he was dressed in the white and red robes and hat of the Hokage of Konohagakure.

The other was a tall, slender man wearing a green chuunin vest, a dark blue mask covering his face, and a hitai-ate over one eye while his silvery hair stood almost straight up in defiance of gravity. Naruto knew that the man's one visible eye was normally only half open as though it was too much work to open it the rest of the way; at the moment, however, it was nearly three quarters of the way open in his mild surprise.

They looked exactly like two men that Naruto held is supreme regard. Two men who had helped shape the man Naruto had become… two men who were most definitely dead.

Naruto's butt hit the ground hard as his legs gave out and his breath caught in his throat. "W-what is this?"

"Naruto?" the man who looked like the Third asked in the gruff, gravely voice that the elderly occasionally gained as they aged. He rescued his pipe just as it started to fall from his mouth and then asked, "What are you doing here? You're supposed to be—"

"What the HELL is going on?!?" Naruto yelled louder as his feet pushed against the worn wooden floor, sliding him back into the room he'd come from until his back hit the bed and even then his feet kept moving in an attempt to put as much distance between himself and the ghosts as possible, even if it meant driving him through solid objects.

"Naruto, what's wrong?" the old man asked, his grey eyes now filled with concern.

The man who looked like Kakashi had stopped watching Naruto and instead began wandering the small kitchen space, even taking a peek inside a refrigerator that looked like it had seen better days and not any time recently either.

Naruto could only stare up at the old man's face in wonder. He'd never seen such a perfect reproduction of another person without anything to base it on. Whoever these guys were, they were good. They even had the two liver spots on the Third's left cheek in the right places.

Naruto knew every detail of the Third's old, wrinkled face. He'd spent countless hours staring up at it while sitting at his desk pretending to do paperwork and the face he was looking at right now was so flawless it had to be a jutsu of some sort.

"Is this a genjutsu?" Naruto asked in a voice that he hoped sounded more confident than he felt.

"Genjutsu?" the old man laughed. "Naruto, you aren't making any sense! You're supposed to be in class right now getting your team assignments. What are you doing sleeping in so late on today of all days?"

Naruto scowled and brought two fingers up in front of his chest as his other hand closed around them. "Yeah right," he hissed, "and I suppose I'm just some little genin who should go hurrying off to the Academy so Iruka-sensei doesn't get mad at me, right?" He felt his considerably large chakra reserves well up within him on command and pushed it out as he called out, "Release!"

The man pretending to be the Third's eyebrows rose until they vanished under his hat as the wisps of smoke curling out of his pipe drifted away from the blond with the expulsion of energy and were momentarily trapped under the Hokage's hat. "Naruto," he growled, his voice suddenly very serious, "get a hold of yourself! You aren't in a genjutsu and you _are_ a genin who better hurry up and get to class before Iruka gets mad at you. After what the two of you went through the other day, I'd have thought you'd be a little more considerate towards his feelings."

Naruto wasn't listening, he was still too caught up in the surprise that he hadn't been able to break free of the genjutsu. It was possible, he supposed, that he wasn't stuck in a jutsu, but instead that these two men were playing some other sort of trick on him, somehow disguising themselves as the Third and Kakashi, or maybe the genjutsu user was just extremely good.

"What do you want with me?" Naruto demanded at last, swallowing the confusion that he'd felt when he'd first set eyes upon them. "Konoha won't negotiate with you and they won't pay any sort of ransom, even if you…"

"Shut up, Naruto," the old man groaned as he rubbed his forehead with his hand, momentarily pushing back his hat and revealing another perfectly placed liver spot that was not always visible.

"I know you're not the Third, so you can stop pretending," Naruto shot back. "The Third's been dead for years, if you wanted to try something like this you should have disguised yourself as Ts—" Naruto was unable to finish his last line as the old man burst into laughter.

"Dead, you say?" he chuckled merrily. "My boy, sixty-nine might seem old to one so young, but it's not _that_ old! I've still got a few more years left in me, I think."

"Excuse me," Kakashi's voice asked as his head peeked through the doorway into the bedroom, "have you been drinking this?" He held up a milk carton with a picture of a black and white cow on it and gave it a little shake. Liquid could be heard sloshing back and forth within along with the sounds of more solid pieces hitting the cardboard walls.

Naruto stared at the image of his old sensei in confusion while the pretend-Hokage nodded his head in understanding. "Naruto, you had a bad dream last night, that's all," the old man said with a kind smile. "When you put that sort of thing in your body right before you go to sleep, it's bound to give you unsettling dreams."

"…or the runs," Kakashi added offhandedly as he headed back to the kitchen to return the expired milk to the refrigerator.

"It wasn't a dream!" Naruto insisted. "I'm the Hokage… well, the temporary Hokage anyway, and you were dead…"

"Naruto, there's no such thing as a 'temporary Hokage,'" the old man pointed out. "You're either Hokage or you aren't."

"But…"

"I know it seemed real to you and it probably didn't help that you woke up to strange voices in your home, but it was only a dream. Now go get dressed and Kakashi-sensei here will take you to meet your teammates."

Naruto looked from the face of the Third to Kakashi and then back again, trying to think of something to say, but instead found himself rising to his feet and nodding.

The Third smiled at him and stepped out of the room, quietly closing the door behind him. Through the door Naruto heard him say, "Not quite the way I expected you to meet him, but that's Naruto for you."

Kakashi's response was unintelligible, but it was just as well. Naruto had other things to worry about, like trying to figure out what the hell was going on and who those two men were, because they _weren't_ Sarutobi Hiruzen and Hatake Kakashi, he was sure of that much, at least.

Naruto sat down on the bed and looked around. Now that he sort of knew what game was going on, he had to admit that the room did look a lot like the bedroom of his old apartment. The posters were right, the half-dead plant was about where he remembered Mr. Ukki being until he'd nursed it back to health and given it to Kakashi to add a little color to his sensei's apartment, and the view from the window was good enough that Naruto couldn't see any differences.

After deciding that there weren't going to be any mistakes that he could spot just by looking hard enough, he stumbled over to a beat up dresser that was even missing the front right corner like his had following a mishap dragging it up to the apartment from the dumpster in a back alley not too far from where he had lived. Inside he found a single orange jacket with a white collar and blue panels on the shoulders and upper chest, two pairs of orange pants, and four dark blue shirts. They were exactly what he'd worn when he was younger.

They wouldn't fit now, of course, but he had to be impressed by the level of detail this genjutsu or masquerade was showing. Whoever was behind this had gotten the Third down perfectly and had almost gotten Kakashi right as well, except that they'd made him much too tall. They had his room right and also his clothing, but while they could reproduce a room or two and maybe a few people, they couldn't change the fact that Naruto had grown over thirty centimeters and gained about twenty-five kilograms in the fifteen plus years that separated him from his twelve year old self, the jacket and pants wouldn't fit him now.

Naruto slowly reached down and touched the clothing, smiling at the wave of nostalgia that overtook him as he felt the worn cloth under his fingertips.

And then, slowly his smile dropped to a frown as he stared at his hand. It looked strange for some reason. It was small and smooth, like the hand of a child. He flexed his fingers experimentally, squeezing the jacket under them, just to make sure they were really his, and then hurried towards the bathroom, stumbling and falling into the wall twice before finally arriving.

As with everything else, his bathroom had been reproduced well enough that he couldn't see any mistakes. The mirror was cracked and one of the handles on the faucet was missing. The rusted drain in the sink didn't have a stopper anymore, though there clearly was supposed to be one. His old toothbrush – or at least what looked like his old toothbrush – was sitting on the edge of the sink as if it had been hurriedly thrown down while he ran off to class and the tube of toothpaste was missing its lid, leaving a crusty mess around the opening.

Naruto's gaze, however, was fixed on the mirror or, more accurately, on the face staring out of the mirror. It was him as he'd been years and years ago. The image wasn't of an adult or even of himself after he'd trained with Jiraiya, it was that of a child. The boy in the mirror's eyes widened in terror as he stared at Naruto and his hand slowly reached up and touched his face just as Naruto's did the same.

Naruto nearly cried out in alarm, but quickly bit down on his tongue before he could make a sound. The last thing he needed now was to have the old man pretending to be the Third come rushing in to make fun of him some more. He couldn't lose his head over this, he had to think and figure out what was going on.

He was in a genjutsu, he was sure of it now. No amount of make up or costumes could produce this sort of effect and any henge placed on him would have been dispelled when he'd tried to release the genjutsu earlier.

Was this Jigyaku no Jutsu, then? Or maybe some other genjutsu he'd never heard of before?

Jigyaku was used to retrieve memories in greater detail than the conscious mind could normally produce, and it didn't seem likely that it was what Naruto was under. He'd never used it himself, but he'd be under the hypnosis technique once or twice and it hadn't felt like this. Those times he'd recounted a few difficult to recall memories with perfect clarity, not made-up something completely new. He'd also been aware of the fact that he was speaking and telling those around him what he was seeing in his mind. That wasn't happening here.

Naruto slowly sank to the floor, ran his fingers through his short, spiky, blond hair, and blew out a calming breath but didn't feel much calmer for it. He closed his eyes and drew in another deep breath as he tried to think.

Something must have happened to him the previous night. Had he actually gone out drinking like he'd originally thought or had something else happened?

It took him a moment, but then he remembered that Hinata had come by the day before delivering a message from her husband, the leader of the Hyuuga clan, requesting a meeting last night and Naruto had been forced to accept. Much as he hated to admit it, he needed the damn Hyuuga clan in general and their leader in particular to remain happy in order to fight the enemy outside the gates without worrying about the ones inside. The leader of the clan, Hyuuga Hiroshi, Hinata's husband – though Naruto hated to think of the man as such – was politically savvy and always looking to scoot up a few notches on the totem pole of power, usually by knocking someone else down a few pegs.

Had Hiroshi done this to him somehow? Naruto didn't think it was likely. He knew the man disliked him and the feeling was more than reciprocated on Naruto's side, but Hiroshi was a coward who would never do something like this. He might hit and belittle his wife who was willing to put up with the abuse for the 'good' of her clan – even when Naruto told her nothing good was coming from what was happening to her – but he wouldn't attack the de facto leader of the village no matter how much he might like to. No, he would try to whittle away at Naruto's support amongst the village council – as if he really had any to begin with – and look forward to the day when the war with the Sound ended and he could politically stab Naruto in the back. Hiroshi wasn't stupid nor was he particularly brave in real combat unless someone was watching. Something like this was beyond him.

Naruto frowned thoughtfully, had he even met with the bastard the previous night?

No… something else had happened…

A battle? Yes, that was it; Naruto had fought someone… while Konoha was burning around him…

He gasped as the memory of the pinwheel pupil and tomoe of Orochimaru's Mangekyo Sharingan flashed in front of his eyes.

_'So that's it, huh? This isn't Jigyaku no Jutsu, it is Tsukuyomi,'_ Naruto thought dejectedly. He'd only gone through both Madara's and Itachi's Tsukuyomi once or twice each, but that was more than plenty as far as he was concerned – and also more than most anyone else had lived through to his knowledge. The genjutsu created by the Mangekyo Sharingan was arguably the most powerful in the world, once you saw that Sharingan you were trapped in the jutsu until either the user ran out of chakra or got bored of torturing you. Unfortunately days could seem to pass inside the technique while only a few seconds of real time slipped by so running out of chakra wasn't much of a problem and Orochimaru enjoyed torturing people far too much to get bored of it anytime soon.

This was far different from what he'd seen the last time he was trapped. At that time, Madara had made it seem that Naruto was being been mauled by something that looked like Kyuubi over and over for a week, the sequence always starting over just as he felt himself about to die. The sky and moon had been red then and the world around him had been strangely colored as well, whereas here he was seeing things that looked completely and totally natural. Other times things had appeared to be normal, but usually something horrible happened that quickly clued him in to the fact that things were _not_ normal… like his skin melting or turning into Sasuke with his curse seal activated. But so far, other than appearing to be younger and meeting up with two people who were definitely dead, nothing too strange was happening to him… he certainly wasn't being attacked at all. Were it not for the fact that he could remember being older, this illusion would have seemed completely real and he might have just gotten dressed and headed off to the Academy to get his team assignments.

Had Orochimaru really advanced this much already? Were even his Uchiha techniques so far beyond Itachi's and Madara's as to make the previous two strongest living Uchihas look like children who were only pretending to be a ninja?

Naruto shook his head and opened his blue eyes, staring unseeingly up at a crack on the ceiling. If Orochimaru was that powerful, there was no way anyone would stand a chance against him. Konoha would be destroyed… or perhaps "more destroyed" was a more accurate way of putting it. The only thing he could do when he awoke from this would be to either fight Orochimaru in an attempt to give any surviving ninja and villagers a chance to flee or to simply unseal the kyuubi and accept the consequences that would come with that.

Kyuubi could possibly kill Orochimaru, but he'd probably kill everyone else as well… either way, they were all dead, at least Kyuubi would kill them quickly and _might_ not hunt every last one of them down and slaughter them.

If he knew Anko's Soujasousai no Jutsu, he could try to use that – though the Sharingan would probably see what he was trying to do the moment he started to make his move – but it didn't matter because Orochimaru and Anko were the only two who knew the suicide technique from what Naruto had heard. Anko had taken its secret to her grave and Orochimaru was possibly even less likely to tell him how to do it than she was.

With a nearly overwhelming sense of hopelessness, Naruto rose to his feet, stumbled over to the dresser, and got dressed as quickly as possible. He smiled weakly down at what looked like the hitai-ate Iruka had given him when he first graduated and then tied it around his head, using it to hold his bangs away from his eyes.

The torture would no doubt start soon and he planned on taking it like a true Leaf nin and then when it was over he was going to unleash hell on his enemy… and everyone else.

With one last sigh, Naruto worked his way over to the door – still struggling to control his body – and went out to see the imaginary ghosts that had probably been sent to begin his torture.

ooo

Hatake Kakashi did not like children on a normal basis and as they made their way through the winding dirt streets of Konoha, he was growing ever more certain that, despite the boy's parentage, he was especially going to dislike Uzumaki Naruto. He wasn't normally the sort to jump to conclusions so quickly, but in this case he couldn't deny what his gut was telling him.

The boy had started out interesting enough, skipping his last class of the year, missing team assignments, and then practically attacking the Hokage of all people was enough to get Kakashi to pay some attention to him, but it had really been all down hill from there. After they had left Naruto's apartment, they had hit the main street which would lead them almost straight to the Academy. Naruto had followed quietly behind him, except when he would inexplicably stumble or trip over his own feet. The Hokage had said the boy was a bit of a moron, but Kakashi wasn't sure how Naruto had managed to live twelve whole years without learning how to put one foot in front of the other properly. It was as if he was trying to take larger steps than his legs were capable of and his arms were swinging awkwardly at his sides.

The first few people they passed had started to smile as they saw them, or more accurately, they had smiled at Kakashi. Then Naruto had tripped or fallen and alerted them to his presence at which point their eyes had become cold and their smiles had fallen. The first time this had happened Naruto had looked shocked and more than a little hurt, as if he were expecting a totally different reaction, but then he'd schooled his face, firmly placed his eyes straight ahead, and then promptly tripped and fell on his face. This – naturally, but not necessarily fairly – had earned him some cruel laughter from those around him as he tried to pick himself off the ground.

After a while Kakashi had decided to take a side route to save Naruto from any more taunts and also to see what his reaction would be. He couldn't officially consider it a test, but he was curious as to how Naruto, who was almost legendary for his disregard for any and all authority, would react. Kakashi disliked people who followed their leaders regardless of how idiotic their decisions were… the sort of person he'd been when he was Naruto's age… and figured that Naruto probably stood a better chance of restoring his faith in fresh from the Academy genin than anyone else on his team.

Sadly, Naruto had looked confused, but then shrugged and followed at his potential instructor's feet like an obedient little puppy.

If he were allowed to, Kakashi might have failed him right then. He almost considered asking why Naruto didn't bother to point out that they were taking the long route, but before he could, Naruto tripped and ended up head down in a trashcan that he'd unsuccessfully attempted to sidestep, his feet kicking back and forth in a desperate and futile attempt to free himself.

Kakashi grabbed the blond ninja by his ankle and lifted him straight out of the refuse, wrinkling his nose under his mask at the stench that came with the boy. Part of Naruto's face was now covered in some sort of green muck that had probably been there for longer than it should have, and a banana peel had managed to get stuck on his hitai-ate. The white collar of his orange jacket as well as half of his head were soaked in an unidentifiable yellow liquid and the moment he was dropped unceremoniously on the ground he fished something out of one of his sleeve and tossed it back at the trash can, missing horribly. Kakashi glanced down at the object and rolled his eyes - it was a large, overflowing diaper.

"That was uncalled for," Naruto grumbled as he spit some of the green, smelly slime from his mouth and looked up at the sky in annoyance.

Kakashi thought about letting his young charge go home and change, but after Naruto's failure to even make a peep about the long-cut they were currently taking, he decided to let the boy suffer for the moment. The meeting wouldn't be that long and a ninja needed to learn to deal with all sorts of hardships… not that Naruto or anyone on his team was likely to become a ninja anyway.

"Come on, we don't want to be late," Kakashi said in a cheerful voice.

"Yeah_ sensei_, that's clearly something you're worried about," Naruto replied, earning himself a few points without even meaning too, though the way he said 'sensei' left something to be desired. Kakashi wanted people who would think for themselves, not someone who disrespected his leaders.

"We'll take the roofs, that way you won't cause too much of a scene."

"Whatever…"

Kakashi gave Naruto a slightly sour look and then leapt onto a nearby balcony before bouncing up onto the rooftops above them.

Naruto tried to follow him, but overshot the balcony horribly, crashing through a window and into someone's apartment. A second later there was a loud scream and the sounds of a struggle and then Naruto hurried back through the window, tripped, and fell back down to earth, landing on his back in a cloud of dust with a thud.

Kakashi's head hit his hand as he stared down at the clumsy boy. "Why don't you just get there when you can?" he suggested.

Naruto's response was not something that a twelve year old should have ever heard, let alone be willing to repeat, and the hand gesture that accompanied it didn't help matters much.

"Watch out for trashcans," the jounin offered helpfully before leaping away, quickly heading in the direction of the Academy.

ooo

Naruto scowled and closed his eyes, doing his best to ignore the stench that covered him and made his eyes sting and water. This was probably the most idiotic genjutsu he'd ever heard of, as well as the most detailed. He'd seen villagers along the road that he hadn't seen in years, but still recognized on sight. The baker who used to yell at him when he put his hands on the fresh baked bread and sniffed them lustfully, the old woman who spit in his direction almost every morning, the kids who were four or five years younger than him and had played silly games with him until their parents warned them to keep away from him…

All of them were perfect. He'd never seen anything like it. It was as if he'd literally been transported back in time. He'd heard of and even been trapped in detailed jutsu before, but never anything at this level.

Even though he was an evil, psychopathic, murdering bastard, Orochimaru really was amazing. Naruto suspected that at least part of the man's skill stemmed from Sasuke's own prodigious talents. If Sasuke had just stuck around and not betrayed the village he would no doubt have eventually avenged his clan, but now he was nothing more than a tool for the Snake Sannin, a container to be used up and then tossed aside when it was no longer useful.

Naruto couldn't help but wonder if there was enough of Sasuke left in there to regret the fact that he would never resurrect his clan – the second part of his 'ambition.'

With a groan, Naruto rolled himself into a sitting position and stood up. He still couldn't control his body very well in this jutsu and it was beginning to get annoying. He just wasn't used to being so short and weighing so little. When he'd mistimed his jump it had been because he'd pushed too much chakra into his legs and his numerous trips were due – at least in part – to him being used to longer legs. When he'd gone to step around the trashcan he'd assumed that one step would get him fully around it, instead it had left him only half way there and as he'd attempted to shift his body to avoid smashing into it, he'd again misjudged his size and had lost his balance.

It seemed that Orochimaru was planning on using his Mangekyo Sharingan to _embarrass_ Naruto to death. Not exactly what Naruto would have pictured the evil bastard who had practically taken over the entire world to do with one of the ultimate bloodline abilities, but then it was hard to understand the mind of someone like Orochimaru. It seemed out of character, but Naruto was looking at the evidence and he couldn't deny what was happening to him.

He reached up and wiped more of the green slime away from his mouth, further staining his jacket, and then got to his feet and slowly made his way towards the Academy, trying to carefully control his movements and also watching for the sneak attack that would probably be coming at any moment.

o

o

A/N: This will be one of the longest Author's Notes, sorry, just have a lot to say this time around, I guess… Anyway, this is obviously a Naruto goes back in time story. Not terribly original, I know, but I happen to really enjoy these types of stories and besides that, I've had this running around my head since Kakashi unveiled his new Sharingan in chapter 260-something. I've read Foxie-sama's For the Love of My Friends as well as Red Crow's original Second Chances. This will, hopefully, be different from those, but we'll see. I wasn't too original coming up with the premise for the story, so only time will tell if I go up hill or down hill from here!

As a warning for everyone. Naruto will not just be running around changing things willy-nilly. For one thing, the next couple of chapters are all going to occur within the span of one day, so he won't have had time to act enough to change things for them, for another, I just don't see him being stupid enough to change things that _WORKED_ originally. If you're looking for SuperNaruto, this won't be your type of story. He won't be beating up Kakashi, befriending Sasuke in less than a week, or any of the other things he tends to do in time travel fics. Sorry, that's just not the sort of story it is.

Eventually there will be some sort of romantic couplings, but I'm not totally sure what they'll be. I'm a Naruto-Hinata fan – though I'll accept him with just about any female character roughly his age so long as the relationship doesn't come out of thin air (_'Hmm, I've never spent any time with Hinata/Ino/Temari/whoever but I suddenly find myself longing to spend the rest of my life with them making as many babies as we can!'_) – but the fact is that she's 12 or 13 and he's about 35 (at least in his own mind), so if it or any other ship with him does happen, it won't be until much, much later (I've already written rough drafts up to about Chapter 20 and there hasn't been any romance yet). Sakura and Sasuke is pretty likely, but again there are some huge hurtles that the relationship would have to get over before they could get together, so it won't happen quickly. Others: Ino-Sai, I know when he calls her Miss Lovely, he's saying the opposite of what he thinks of her, but it's just too funny. Shikamaru-Temari, I've always like this one, it'll show up if the story calls for it. Any other relationships will either be canon or just something I come up with as the plot demands.

Sarutobi Hiruzen – The official name of the Third Hokage according to the Shippuuden Data Book. If you see him called Atsunobu, it's because that was the name that I made up for him prior to his name being revealed. I'm trying to go back and fix all of them, but there's always the chance that I missed one somewhere.

Jigyaku no Jutsu: "Time Reversal Technique" (it's an interrogation technique that allows the person under it to recall past events in incredible detail). It comes from the filler episode where the old man was trying to blow up the village with lots of hidden exploding tags. For the most part, the fillers will be ignored (I like the manga better than the anime anyway), but techniques from them will probably show up from time to time.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

o

Haruno Sakura shifted uncomfortably as the last of her classmates were led out the door by their jounin. Unconsciously she reached up and brushed a stray strand of pink hair away from her overly large (in her opinion) forehead and tucked it behind her ear as she glanced at the only other person in the room, Uchiha Sasuke.

The silence in the room felt oppressive to her. It hadn't been too bad when the room had been filed with excited kids waiting for their jounin to show up – even if some of them hated her for breaking the unspoken class-time rules by daring to sit next to Sasuke and _trying_ to talk with him earlier that day – but as they had gradually filed out of the room when their jounin called for them, a tension had settled in. She thought it might possibly only be her imagination since Sasuke didn't seem to notice, but she could feel the air thickening as the rest of their former classmates exited and left the two of them all alone.

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye again and sighed inwardly, he really was beautiful. Dark hair, dark eyes, flawless skin… he was perfect… or would be if he would talk a little so she didn't feel so uncomfortable.

Should she say something to him? Try to break the ice? They were destined to fall in love with each other, after all, and loving relationships required communication. Heck, _all_ relationships required communication. But what were they supposed to talk about? It had to be something safe, but also something interesting. Something that showed him how smart and funny she was, but it also had to inspire him to give a reply. A question, maybe? One that he'd feel like answering…

"So, what do you think is taking our sensei so long?" she asked quickly and then instantly regretted it. It was not an interesting, funny, smart, or even slightly engaging question, why had she asked it?

"Who knows?" Sasuke said with a shrug without lifting his chin from his hands or taking his eyes off of the door.

Sakura offered up a small prayer of thanks to the Gods of Love that he'd felt compelled to answer her lame question even as she asked a possibly lamer one. "Do you think he's bringing Naruto?"

Sasuke shrugged his shoulders again and grunted.

"I hope he doesn't…" she was growing desperate now and needed some sort of sustained conversation to quiet her nerves. "I can't stand having Naruto around. He's just so… so annoying!"

Her lips twisted into a scowl as thoughts of past torments at the hands of her third teammate sprang to mind. His constant badgering of her to go on a date with him, the time he'd gotten her in trouble by passing a note to her – again asking if she'd go out with him – the way he always chased after her or tried to impress her with his perverted jokes and stupid pranks, embarrassing her in front of her friends, other villagers, and once even in front of her mother who had sternly told Sakura to stay away from him – as if she actually _wanted_ him around.

"It's because he doesn't have any parents," she concluded aloud, barely even talking to Sasuke anymore. "He just gets to do whatever he wants all the time and it's made him selfish and socially inept."

She sighed and looked over at her crush who was glancing at her out of the corner of his eyes now, an unreadable expression on his face. Then she let her head fall back and stared up at the ceiling. "If I did half the things he does, my parents would pull me out of the Academy and ground me for life! Sometimes… sometimes I envy him, not having parents to nag him all the time. It must be nice…"

Sakura smiled at the thought of being able to live on her own and turned towards Sasuke, expecting him to still be staring more or less straight ahead and ignoring her, but instead found his dark eyes boring into her. The expression on his face was enough to freeze her blood.

"You're an _idiot_," he hissed, his voice filled with contempt. "Kids who grow up without parents always turn out selfish… selfish and lonely. You can't even imagine a pain that would compare with it!" He shook his head angrily and then added, "Getting nagged by parents would be a dream come true to kids who grow up without them."

Sakura's mouth fell open and she wished the wooden floor would open up and let her sink through it as she realized her blunder. She'd heard, of course, that Sasuke's family had been killed when he was younger and that he lived alone at the edge of the section of the village his clan had occupied. It had been part of his appeal, really. The brooding, handsome genius with the tragic past that he had to live with everyday, it made the girls who were already attracted to him for his looks want to take him into their arms and heal his broken heart. The tragedy added a certain amount of mystery and danger to him. It was also something that most only thought about in an abstract sort of way. It never really occurred to them what the loss of his family meant to _him_, only what it would mean in some childish romantic fantasy.

"Sasuke, I…"

"Just sit there and be quiet!" he snapped, silencing her instantly and bringing tears to her green eyes. "I don't want to hear any more out of you. You're _annoying_."

Sakura's eyes widened and then she nodded meekly before hanging her head, her pink hair hiding her tears as it hung down in front of her face.

The rest of their wait was extremely uncomfortable, for Sakura especially, but it was also extremely quiet which she hoped Sasuke would appreciate.

ooo

Kakashi had not gone to the Academy as he'd told Naruto he would. Instead he was following the boy from above, moving as silent as a shadow, completely hidden from view. While Naruto had been a disappointment so far, he was slowly becoming more interesting. He wasn't bouncing off the walls with excitement, trying to cause mischief, or anything else that Naruto was supposed to do. Instead he was wandering through the back alleys of the village – which he seemed to know by heart – occasionally looking up at different and seemingly ordinary buildings in surprise and then quickly shaking his head and scowling as though he were having a mental argument with himself. He hadn't been tripping as much as he was earlier, but that seemed to be more due to the fact that he was practically dragging his feet through the dust of the streets and walkways than because he'd suddenly developed some coordination.

There weren't very many people for him to run into on the side streets, but the ones he did come across all scowled and shouted at him from a distance and then plugged their noses as he drew nearer. Kakashi couldn't blame them for their second reaction, with his excellent sense of smell he could easily detect the stench rolling off the boy, even from his hiding place on the rooftops.

When they had been walking together down the main road, Naruto had recoiled in shock the first few times an insult had been hurled his way, but now he didn't even bother looking at those who cursed him. It was, Kakashi supposed, natural that Naruto would think his becoming a ninja would have changed the villagers' opinions of him, many children thought that a new title meant they were new people. It usually didn't work that way, and it certainly wasn't going to in Naruto's case… he probably wouldn't even be a ninja for all that long anyway.

Kakashi had never been great with children and he really didn't like them; he just couldn't understand what was going through their minds or why they always seemed so stupid when it came to the important stuff. His own childhood had been cut tragically short by when his father had shamed their family name and then killed himself, with Kakashi as a witness, leaving his young son to shoulder the burden of that shame on his own. On top of that, he grew up in the midst of the Third Great Ninja War, during which the death of a friend was almost an everyday occurrence. His prodigious talents helped him rise through the ranks quickly, basically making him an adult in the eyes of the village (and in his own eyes, for that matter) before he'd even hit puberty. Making him the babysitter of three very green genin was probably the worst idea anyone had ever had, but orders were orders. Besides, it wasn't like he'd ever actually had to _lead_ a team of genin, because none of them could see through his test and earn the right to be called Leaf Ninja.

He could, however, sympathize with what Naruto was going through. It wasn't all that long ago that he had been a person living with the consequences of something he hadn't done. The villagers had never said anything to him, but he had always been able to hear their whispers, he knew what they said about his father and what they wondered about him. It was hard to live in that sort of environment, watching his mother cry for the man that many in the village – including her own son – despised, but it would be harder for Naruto. He most likely would never be able to change the minds of the villagers; he would forever be an outcast. Were he a genius, as Kakashi was, then he might have had a chance, but with nothing to win them over with, Naruto would forever be associated only with the Kyuubi.

As Naruto rounded a corner Kakashi thought he saw the boy's blue eyes flash in his direction, but he neither slowed down nor sped up as he walked so the jounin simply passed it off as coincidence. There was no way a genin who had barely managed to graduate could detect him, there probably wasn't even a way that a chuunin who had graduated first in his class would have noticed Kakashi.

He continued to follow the boy all the way to the Academy, moving casually but cautiously, mentally taking notes and drawing tentative conclusions about the boy who would be apart of his team for the next twenty-six hours or so.

And silently wishing that the boy could have been a part of a team with a different jounin. It didn't seem fair that _he_ would have to be the one to crush this particular boy's dreams… but orders were orders.

ooo

By the time Naruto and Kakashi reached the room where Sakura and Sasuke were waiting for them, Naruto was dirtier and more stinky than ever, having stumbled into two unpleasant messes that neither he nor Kakashi had wanted to identify as well as more than a few trips into the dust of the streets and alleys.

Sakura and Sasuke instantly wished that the two had taken longer to arrive – or that Naruto had opted not to arrive at all.

"Ugh! Naruto, what is that smell?" Sakura demanded the moment the blond walked through the door. "Were you rolling in manure?"

Naruto gave her a nasty look, which instantly softened as his eyes grew glassy. He quickly looked away and wiped a grime covered hand across his face, leaving himself even messier, but with no hint of tears.

"It's not real," he whispered quietly, "it's just an illusion."

"It doesn't _smell_ like an illusion," Sakura scowled. "You smell terrible! Why didn't you at least take a bath before you came?"

Naruto's jaw flexed and his eyes flashed for just a second and then he looked away, ignoring the rest of her comments – of which there were plenty – and refusing to even let his eyes accidentally land on Sasuke. Over and over he mouthed the words "not real" hoping to convince himself, but not entirely succeeding.

The room was quiet for a moment and then Kakashi asked, "You guys are on Team Seven, right?"

"As if any other jounin was going to be this late…"

"What was that Naruto?" Kakashi asked, looking down at the dirty boy.

"Er, nothing, uh, '_sensei,'_" he replied in a voice filled with irritation and a healthy amount of disrespect.

"Naruto!" Sakura hissed admonishingly, casting a slightly alarmed look at Kakashi to whom she added, "I'm so sorry about him sensei, he's a rude idiot, just ignore him, everyone else does."

Naruto snorted, but didn't offer a comeback. He could feel the muscles in his body constrict as he held back the desire to run over to her and throw his arms around her. It was hard to believe how easily the sight of her and the sound of her voice were affecting him. Sakura was _dead_, this wasn't her. All he was seeing and hearing was an illusion meant to drive him crazy, nothing more. Her scent filling his nostrils wasn't real… her voice wasn't real… none of it was anything more than an incredibly effective and detailed genjutsu.

"Why don't we go to the roof and get to know each other a bit," Kakashi suggested, his one eye focused on Sasuke who had a calm, almost bored, expression on his face. "Then I'll give you your instructions and you'll have the rest of the day to yourselves."

The three genin followed him out of the room and up a flight of stairs, Sasuke and Sakura at his heels, Naruto bringing up the rear, stinking like an unhealthy mixture of old, dirty diapers and decaying fish paste.

Orochimaru, the blond concluded, was a scary genius. Even something that seemed as pointless as this genjutsu was incredibly good at eliciting its desired results… if its desired result was to make him question his sanity and torture him with images that couldn't be real. He knew his friends were all dead and yet all he wanted to do was throw his arms around them and cry in relief that they were among the living again.

They made their way onto the roof, which had a small area meant for meditation and studying though it was more often used as a place to eat lunch with friends. Several grey stone arches offered both a little protection from the elements and added to the aesthetically pleasing layout of the area. The sides were lined with trees and perfectly cut granite tiles made up the walkway down the middle. At the far end, three steps led down to the small lading before the edge of the building. Kakashi led them to this spot and sat on the railing surrounding the edge of the Academy roof while Sasuke sat on the highest step and Sakura took the second step down. Without thinking, Naruto also sat on the second step, ignoring the way Sasuke and Sakura scooted away from him.

"Now then," Kakashi said, folding his arms across his chest, "I'd like you all to tell us a little about yourselves." He noted that two of his students were giving him blank stares, though Sasuke was hiding it far better than Sakura. Naruto had apparently gotten bored because he was staring off into space, completely ignoring everything around him. "…you know, the usual," the jounin began to elaborate, "your likes, your dislikes… dreams for the future, hobbies… stuff like that."

From what he'd heard about his team, he'd expected Naruto to jump to his feet and answer the question first, eager to be the center of attention for awhile. Instead, he sat quietly and continued looking out over the city with an odd expression on his face.

As Kakashi again wondered why the genin was acting so different from what the Third had told him, Sakura raised her hands and asked, "Could you go first, sensei? We don't know anything about you."

Naruto's eyes flickered in her direction and then quickly snapped back to whatever he was pretending to look at. Kakashi couldn't help but smile, apparently an 'old guy' like himself just wasn't enough to hold Naruto's attention. The boy should have been on Yuhi Kurenai's team instead.

"Me? Well, my name is Hatake Kakashi," he started in a neutral voice. "I have no desire to tell you guys about my likes and dislikes… Dreams for the future?" he paused for a moment and then went on, "Well, I have lots of hobbies…" With that, he straightened up a little and said, "Now your turn, how about we start with Stinky there on the right?"

Sakura leaned over to Sasuke and whispered, "So all we learned was his name?"

Naruto glanced at Kakashi for a moment and then rolled his eyes. "This is stupid," he announced. "Why are you putting me through all of this?"

"Because if you don't tell me a little about yourself, I won't really know who you are and it's important for a leader to know his soldiers," Kakashi replied smoothly.

Naruto shook his head in annoyance, he had hated Orochimaru for a long time, but this was making things a little too personal. The Sannin should not have been allowed to dig into these sacred memories like this. And yet, Naruto was trapped here, forced to watch everything unfold because the genjutsu of the Mangekyo Sharingan was basically unbreakable. He didn't really want to play along with this sick game, but somewhere, deep down, something seemed to force him to answer.

"My name is Uzumaki Naruto. I like a lot of stuff, I dislike…" he stopped himself from saying what he wanted to, took a deep breath and said, "I doubt you really want to hear about my dreams for the future… but I will say that I'm really looking forward to unleashing all hell on a snake in the very near future."

Kakashi raised his one visible eyebrow in surprise. Naruto's answer was even more peculiar than his behavior up until that point. Of course, it didn't really matter all that much, since he would be getting sent back to the Academy or kicked out of the ninja corps altogether in another twenty-four hours or so. Still, there was a hint of bloodlust in there that Kakashi wasn't pleased to hear coming out of the Kyuubi's container. There was nothing he could do about that at the moment, however, so he turned his eye to Sasuke and said, "Next."

Sasuke's elbows were propped up on his knees and his hands were folded in front of his face, he didn't bother moving them while he answered. "My name is Uchiha Sasuke. There are plenty of things that I dislike, not that it matters because there's almost nothing that I like. I don't want to say that I have a 'dream,' but I do have an… ambition. I'm going to restore my clan and also," Sasuke's face suddenly grew colder and his lips pulled back slightly from his teeth as he said, "there's a man that I've sworn to kill."

Sakura stared at Sasuke in shock and then a look of pleasure appeared on her face, while Naruto shot him a reproachful glare, but kept his mouth shut. Kakashi wasn't remotely surprised by the Uchiha's answer; he would have felt the same way in the boy's position.

The jounin turned to Sakura. "And finally, the young lady."

Sakura blushed bashfully, the slight red in her face seeming more pronounced with her long pink hair, as she said, "I'm Haruno Sakura. The thing I like is… Well, the _person_ I like is…" her eyes shifted towards Sasuke, who was pointedly looking anywhere but at her, and her blush deepened. "Um… should I say my dream for the future?" She took a deep breath, opened her mouth and then closed it as she began to giggle.

There was a brief moment of silence. Naruto was almost angry to see her having been reduced to some sort of Uchihatard – as the boys in his class had called Sasuke's little fan club during their Academy days – but then he remembered that back at the Academy, Sakura actually _was_ an Uchihatard, one of the queen Uchihatards, in fact. It hadn't been until later, after they'd been Team Seven for quite a while that she'd begun to change and by the time he'd returned from training with Jiraiha, most of it long gone – though there were moments when the old Uchihatarded Sakura reared her ugly head. He'd forgotten how silly and stupid she used to be every time Sasuke so much as looked her direction.

Naruto burst into laughter. As sad and infuriating as this day had been, he just couldn't help himself. "You know, I'd totally forgotten how much Sakura-chan wanted to jump Sasuke's bones!"

Kakashi and Sasuke's eyes opened wide at the blond ninja's crass statement. Sakura gasped audibly and tears started to spring to her eyes. For a moment, Kakashi thought she might get up and run so that no one would see her cry, but instead her eyes quickly narrowed and her face twisted into a menacing scowl.

"Naruto!" she growled and then hurled herself at him, her fist cocked and ready to end his short life.

Naruto continued laughing up until the moment her fist was about to connect with his face and then he leaned back, causing her to miss while he grabbed hold of her arm and yanked her towards him, bringing up his knee at the same time. If his legs had been longer, like he thought they were, his aim would have been perfect, but they weren't and it wasn't. Instead of her stomach, he was probably going to hit her in either her pelvis of her upper thigh.

As it turned out, he hit neither. Kakashi's strong hand closed around Naruto's still-damp collar and jerked him back, removing the threat to Sakura while he caught her by the shoulder with his other hand, stopping her fall.

"Okay," he said in a voice strained by irritation, "I think we can all guess what Sakura hates at this point, so why don't we just move on?" With a casual flick of his wrist he sent Naruto tumbling against one of the small trees lining the area and then he gave Sakura a slightly harder than strictly necessary shove to put her back on the step that she'd been sitting on.

Naruto ended up lying with his feet in the air against the tree, his back on the hard ground, and his head facing back towards the illusion of his teammates. He slowly rolled over and returned to a sitting position, but did not move away from the tree as he listened to Kakashi explain how many genin would actually become ninja, throw in a few scary comments about their "survival training," and warn them not to eat breakfast. It sounded about the same as he remembered it from when it really happened, though far less scary.

Sakura looked worried while Sasuke was trying to hide it and mostly succeeding. Kakashi looked happy and Naruto could just imagine the jounin snickering behind his mask at the trick he was playing on the poor genin… or at least, if they were actually _real_ people, they'd be poor genin.

But they weren't, Naruto hurriedly reminded himself. They were nothing more than a clever illusion meant to screw with his brain.

As soon as they were dismissed, Sakura gave Naruto one last dirty look and then hurried after Sasuke who was practically inside already. Soon, only Kakashi and Naruto remained.

"Naruto, a word before you go?" Kakashi asked lazily.

Naruto smiled and let his arms drop to his sides as he slid his feet slightly apart, ready to strike or dodge at any moment. "I was wondering if you were going to make me keep playing or if we were just going to get it over with already."

Kakashi's eyebrow rose and then he shook his head. "I won't ask," he decided. He reached back into a pouch resting on his right hip and pulled something out.

Naruto was instantly on guard, shifting his weight forward as he readied his body to dodge whatever was about to come at him.

Instead of kunai, exploding tags, or any other sort of weapon, however, Kakashi's hand came forward with a small roll of bills. "Here," he said as he tossed them to the confused boy, "buy yourself some new milk, get something good in your stomach and get a good night's sleep tonight. I don't want to have to put up with you acting like this again, do you understand?"

Naruto stared down at the money for a moment and the looked up at Kakashi. "Are you kidding me?" he demanded. "You're not even going to attack me or anything?" When Kakashi only stared at him, Naruto scratched his head and waved his hand dismissively. "Fine, whatever," he sighed, he offered a quick series of exaggerated bows and then, his voice changing to that of a bumbling idiot, said, "_I promise, Kakashi-sensei, I'll only drink good milk from now on…_bah!"

Naruto threw the wad of money on the ground, giving it a stomp for good measure before he turned and walked away… tripping on one of the steps, stumbling half way to the door, and then falling part way down the stairs once he'd entered the building. Kakashi stared after him in wonder and perhaps a little amusement for a moment before collecting the bills and then leaping from the building.

ooo

Naruto left the Academy in a huff and didn't bother going back to his apartment. He was certain that he'd mentioned it to himself several times that day already, but he really hated Orochimaru. Being forced to live through an even suckier version of his first day as a ninja was bad enough, but being forced to live through it as a klutz of the highest order was down right infuriating. On top of that, it was all nonsense. This was not the way Orochimaru should have been acting. This was the sort of genjutsu Naruto himself would use – if he had even a hint of talent for the skill – something that would annoy and perhaps humiliate his opponent, but not necessarily hurt him. So far this was nothing more than the nonperverted, genjutsu-version of the Sexy no Jutsu… probably funny as hell to the user and insanely irritating to the victim, but serving little other purpose beyond that, at least as far as Naruto could tell.

He wasn't sure where exactly his unstable legs were taking them and he was too lost in thought to really care. He didn't notice the looks he received from the villagers, nor did he hear their taunts when he stumbled or their cries of disgust when they caught a whiff of his stench. He just kept walking.

Eventually he slowed and came to a stop, finally looking up, and had to smile at what he found. He was standing in front of the three posts of the training area where he, Sasuke, and Sakura had officially become Team Seven. A short distance away he could hear the stream gently following its course and without looking over his shoulder he knew that the large cenotaph was behind him. He couldn't bring himself to turn and look at it, not after all of the names he'd had to order carved into it – actually writing a few of the names of his precious people himself.

If Orochimaru was being accurate, the bluish-green stone wouldn't have half the names that Naruto had seen on it the last time he'd been out here, but if Sakura, Kakashi, Konohamaru, and all the others were on there… he wouldn't be able to take it, not after all of the images he had seen since waking up that morning.

So he kept his back to the memorial and walked towards the stream, figuring that he might as well wash his clothing off while he had the chance. Technically, he knew that the water wasn't real and neither were the clothes, the stench, or anything else around him, but he was tired of thinking that he stunk and wanted to feel like he was clean even if it was all an illusion.

He stripped out of everything from the waist up and sat down in the grass next to the swiftly flowing water that wasn't real and plunged his jacket into the icy stream, massaging his fingers into the stained fabric in an attempt to work loose whatever was tricking his brain into thinking it stunk. After several moments work he pulled his jacket out and took an experimental sniff, wrinkling his nose at the stench that still clung to it. Again and again he dunked it, and again and again it still smelled when it came back up a moment later.

The idea occurred to him that it might not be possible to clean away the stench because it was all part of the genjutsu and would there for keep stinking until Orochimaru decided to make it stop. He was nearly to the point of giving up when he heard a twig snap behind him followed by a small gasp of alarm.

Naruto spun around as he rose to his feet and brought up his arms to defend himself, only to find that he had put too much strength into his spin, throwing him off balance and nearly sending himself tumbling into the stream. Fortunately, no attacks came while he collected himself and turned – slowly this time – in the direction of the three posts.

"I know you're there, so come out," he ordered in a stern voice. He didn't feel any sort of killer intent coming from that direction, but in a genjutsu as complex as this one, that didn't mean anything. He waited another minute and then said, "We both know why you're here, so just come out and get it over with, if you can."

Slowly a small head covered in thick dark-blue hair peeked around the side of the middle post until one pale, nearly white, eye could be seen.

"Hinata-chan?" Naruto asked in surprise his body relaxing for a moment before he remembered that she wasn't really Hinata and was once again on guard. For a moment the two stared at each other, or rather he stared at her and she stared at a patch of grass near his feet while her cheeks burned in embarrassment, and then Naruto rolled his eyes and sighed. "I guess I should have figured he'd throw you at me eventually. Is Konohamaru behind one of the other posts? Maybe Ero-sennin and Tsunade-baa-chan are behind the other?"

"I… uh, n-no, Naruto-kun," Hinata stuttered, still not meeting his eyes. She brought her hands up in front of her chest and began pressing her index fingers against each other, a nervous habit he hadn't seen from her in quite a while. "I-I'm the… the only one here."

Naruto snorted and turned back to his jacket. "Alright, whatever, if you want to come chat with me or if the snake has finally decided to stop messing around and you're here to attack me, feel free. I'll just be cleaning this fake jacket in the fake river to get rid of this damn fake stink."

Hinata did not hurry to his side or attack him, but instead slowly inched her way closer to him, as if she were having as much trouble walking as Naruto had been. Finally, she got within about a meter of him and stopped, looking down at his bare back as he worked his jacket over once more in the stream.

Hinata felt her face warm even more than it had when she had found him there a few minutes ago and watched him from the distance. Her eyes were naturally incredibly sharp even when her Byakugan wasn't activated, at this range it seemed like she could see every fiber of muscle working just beneath his smooth, tan skin and every droplet of water running down his shoulders and back and…

She quickly knelt and watched what his hands were doing, refusing to give into the temptation to dishonor herself by taking another glance at the rest of his body while he worked. "W-what happened?" she asked finally.

Naruto glanced at her, his eyes narrow and dangerous for a moment and Hinata swallowed hard ready to leave if he asked, but his face quickly softened. "I can't even feel mad at you when I know you're not real… how weird is that?"

"I-I beg your p-pardon, Naruto-kun?" the Hyuuga asked in confusion.

"Never mind, it doesn't matter, I guess," he replied as he turned back to his jacket, lifting it up, smelling it and then jamming it back into the stream with a frustrated grunt.

Hinata was quite for a long time, building up her courage, and then asked in a soft voice, "W-w-would you like some… some h-help?"

Naruto lifted the jacket one more time, gave it another sniff and then tossed it in her direction, nearly hitting her in the face with the wet, foul smelling garment. "Sorry," he mumbled when he noticed her hands quickly come up to intercept it, dirty water still splashing her face.

"I-it is okay," she replied as she wiped the offensive smelling liquid away with her sleeve, "it was an a-accident."

Naruto shrugged, knowing that it wasn't _exactly_ an accident, but not feeling like arguing with a phantom of his imagination about whether or not he needed to apologize. Hinata, the real Hinata, was the only one of his friends who had lived through most of the war, because her clan had demanded that she be increasingly sheltered as things started to go bad and especially after Hanabi had died, but even she was dead now. He could dimly remember seeing her body lying in a pool of blood when he found Orochimaru inside Konoha, her husband had been pinned to a tree not far away – the sword piercing through his back as if he'd been running away at the time of his death.

As his thoughts turned to Hyuuga Hiroshi, Naruto bit his lip and glanced at Hinata who was rubbing sand and gravel from the stream bed into his jacket in an attempt to remove the smelly grime.

"I know you aren't really Hinata-chan, but would you mind if I said I was sorry for something?" he asked as he picked up his shirt and dunked it in the stream, mimicking her use of the gravel.

"N-Naruto-kun, I… I _am_ Hinata," she replied, refusing to look up. She'd been in the same class as him for a couple of years and hadn't ever managed to talk with him for as long as she had today. If she looked up at him, she just knew she'd mess things up somehow or would lose her ability to speak.

"If you say so… I just want to tell you that I'm sorry for letting you down all those years ago. You practically asked me to help you, but I never figured it what you wanted me to do…" he stopped messing with his shirt and looked down at his hands as they dipped into the water. He'd never apologized to her, the real her, for his failure, though he'd always wanted to. If he could have figured out what she wanted him to do, he could have saved her from her arranged marriage to that asshole, but he hadn't and she'd paid the price for his failure, just like the rest of his friends. "I know it screwed up your life, even when you lied and said you were happy and well… I'm sorry."

Hinata took a chance and glanced at him, her eyes filled with confusion, and then she quickly lifted his jacket out of the stream and smelled it so that she had an excuse to think about something else. "I-I don't know what y-you are talking about, Naruto-kun. You've never f-failed me…" she took a deep breath, her hands shaking nervously, and then added, "You i-inspire me… to be better than I am."

Naruto sighed wearily and rubbed some water away from one of his eyes with the back of his hand, wincing as he smeared dirt – or worse – into it on accident. With a growl of annoyance he rose and dove into the stream, startling Hinata who had been unable to look at him after her confession.

Naruto seemed to remain under the water for far longer than he should have, by Hinata's estimation, but before she could get truly worried he resurfaced and made his way to the bank, collected a large handful of gravel and rubbed it against his face and chest until droplets of blood were seeping through his fingers. Then he dropped the gravel, dipped once more into the cold water, and then shook himself dry as he stomped back onto the stream bank and plopped down next to Hinata.

"This is way worse than Itachi's," he commented casually as he lay back in the grass and looked up at the few clouds casually slipping across the sky. "At least Itachi made something happen right away, the wait is driving me crazy!"

"N-Naruto-kun... are... are you feeling okay?" Hinata asked after a moment's hesitation. She'd never seen Naruto act even remotely like he had been since she'd arrived at the training grounds and she'd certainly never heard of Itachi, whoever that was. It was as if Naruto was playing make-believe.

"Not really," he grumbled, "stupid genjutsu…"

"G-genjutsu?"

Naruto's head rolled to the side and he gave her a reproachful glare.

Hinata's eyes fell to the ground and she began picking at her fingers again. "I-I'm sorry, Naruto-kun, I… I don't understand. What genjutsu?"

Naruto went back to staring up at the clouds and sighed wearily. "I guess you wouldn't know about the genjutsu since you're just a part of it." He chuckled silently, the only visible evidence of it being the shaking of his chest. "I'm explaining the nature of the world to a figment of my imagination, how stupid is that?"

"Naruto-kun… I-I'm not a figment of your imagination."

Again Naruto turned his head and looked at her, his chest bouncing with silent laughter. "Prove it."

"P-prove it?"

"Sure," he smiled, "prove this isn't a genjutsu to me."

"H-how?" Hinata asked, suddenly growing worried about what she was getting herself into.

"I don't know, I'm just a dumb genin, remember? I didn't pay much attention in class and even when I did I was _dead last_."

Hinata went back to working on his jacket for a moment, using the chore as an excuse not to talk to Naruto and wracking her brain for a reason he would be acting so strangely. Though he'd never done it to her, he was known for pulling pranks, perhaps that was what this was. It didn't seem likely; Naruto's pranks were normally out in the open where everyone could see it – which was the point, after all.

Finally, she looked up from her work, nervously biting her lower lip and said, "I-I don't know how I could… could prove such a thing to you, Naruto-kun."

He was quiet for a moment his eyes shifting back and forth as he contemplated what to say next. "Well, if I'm stuck in a genjutsu, how would I get out?" he asked at last.

Buying herself more time again, Hinata carefully spread his jacket on the shore to dry. It still smelled a little, but it was hardly noticeable now and no amount of sand and water were going to make it any better. "Iruka-sensei and K-Kurenai-sensei taught us how to do that last month," she started tentatively, not certain what exactly he wanted her to say. She folded her legs underneath her, sitting properly and then hesitantly brought her hands together to form the correct seal as she tried to explain how to slow the flow of chakra in his body and then push it out in a burst to disrupt the caster's hold on him and release the genjutsu. Naruto just went back to staring up at the sky.

"So," he asked when she was finished, "what if that doesn't work? How am I supposed to get out then?"

"K-Kurenai-sensei said that if someone outside of the jutsu releases the jutsu on you or if you could h-hurt yourself… it should wake you up…"

"Hmm, I can't wait around for someone to help me, but I guess I haven't tried that second one yet," he conceded. He brought his hand up in front of his face, looked at it thoughtfully for a moment and then grabbed his pinky, twisting and pulling it until there was an audible pop of the finger being forced out of joint.

"Naruto-kun!" Hinata gasped as her eyes widened and she instinctively grabbed his hand before he could damage himself further. It was just as bad as it had sounded, maybe worse. The joint was already beginning to swell and his pinky finger was sitting at an odd angle. "Y-Your finger!"

He gently pulled his hand away from her, looking perplexed for a moment. "It's not a big deal, Hinata-chan. It's not like it won't be healed by tomorrow anyway." He pushed his pinky back into its proper position and then closed his fist, grimacing slightly as the joint popped back into place.

Hinata stared at him in stunned silence for a moment longer, digesting the sight of him casually dislocating a finger and then pushing it back in as though it were nothing. She'd seen injuries as severe and even worse during her time at the Academy, of course, but never one that was intentionally self-inflicted. "You shouldn't hurt yourself like that."

Naruto practically laughed in her face. "Hey, it was your idea. You said that hurting myself would get me out of a genjutsu. What did you think I was going to do when you told me that?"

His question stunned her into silence – not that making her quiet was all that difficult.

"So, do you have any other proofs for me?" he asked casually, looking at his hand and watching the swelling slowly begin to dissipate as the Kyuubi's chakra did its thing.

"N-Naruto-kun, I… I don't want to do this anymore," Hinata said after a long pause. She began to get to her feet. "You're…"

"Oh, come on, Hinata-chan, stay a little longer," Naruto whined sitting up quickly. He was surprised to find that he actually did want her to stay and talk with him, even if she wasn't really Hinata. "This is the most fun I've had all day. Please?"

Hinata knew that it would be better for her to go, Naruto was acting borderline insane… even more so than usual… but something in his voice reached her and she found that she couldn't leave. "O-only if you promise… not to hurt yourself anymore."

Naruto shrugged. "It didn't work anyway, but alright, I promise I won't hurt myself again. So, what else have you got for me?"

"T-those were the only one's we were told about in class."

Naruto thought about it for a moment, frowning. "It seems like there should be a way to figure out if something as big as this was just a genjutsu or not… I mean, what if someone used a genjutsu to make you think you were talking to your friends and you start spilling secrets?"

"Y-you could ask them something only they would know," Hinata pointed out, "If they got it right… that would mean that they were who they s-said they were."

Naruto had tuned her out before she'd even finished speaking, his mind running with her idea as soon as he'd grasped the possibilities it held.

It would have to be someone that Sasuke didn't know well – as his memories of people were apparently helping Orochimaru's genjutsu achieve the perfection that he'd witnessed so far (unless Orochimaru had secretly taken a look inside Naruto's old apartment) – and someone whose childhood Naruto knew a bit about, since he was supposed to be twelve and all of his peers were acting like they had regressed to that point as well.

He knew a lot about Iruka, of course, but he wasn't sure that anything he knew about Iruka or his life story was something that others – particularly Sasuke – wouldn't know as well. Sakura, at the moment, probably wouldn't tell him anything anyway, though she could be a backup candidate as he didn't think Sasuke really knew a lot about her home life or her likes and dislikes or really anything other than what they did when they were together as Team Seven… but she wouldn't be the ideal candidate as Sasuke might have known more about her than Naruto realized. Still, she was better than nothing. He could go to Neji and try asking him some personal questions – assuming he could even find him – but the Hyuuga genius would be even more of a stick in the mud at this point than he had been in the future, plus Naruto actually knew things about Neji that he himself didn't even know yet… or wouldn't know if any of this was real, which it wasn't, of course…

Besides those few, there really weren't all that many people that he could use. He and his friends had, for the most part, not bothered bringing up their pasts too much and he'd never been one to remember trivial details… actually, he'd never been one to remember details period, regardless of how important they were.

"Um… do you have someone that you know well, N-Naruto-kun?" Hinata asked, her voice breaking into his thoughts. "Someone that you knew things about that a genjutsu user wouldn't know?" She knew that he didn't have many friends… or any really, at least so far as _he_ knew, but perhaps he could go ask Iruka some questions and then would feel better about the 'realness' of the world around him. Yes, she was sure of it, Iruka would set him straight and then Naruto would be back to his old self.

Naruto remained still and silent for an impressively long time as he continued to think. Besides Sakura, there was only person whose life he'd ever really gotten to know all that well that Sasuke probably wouldn't have, and he mostly knew things about her because she'd openly told him about them in an attempt to get him talking after the losses started to become too much for him to handle. In fact, she'd continued talking to him about her life and his and anything else she could think to say long after he'd wished she would just go away (sometimes even after he'd _asked_ her to go away, which had surprised him). She'd been there to comfort him after Sakura's death, just like he was there to comfort her as her own teammates and family were killed in the long, brutal war.

And, as luck would have it, she was sitting right next to him, nervously biting her thumbnail and trying to look anywhere but at him.

"Hey Hinata-chan, what's you favorite food?"

Hinata's eyes widened and she swallowed hard. "M-me?" she asked in a trembling voice.

"Sure," he laughed at her expression, "I don't see any other Hinatas around, do you?"

Hinata unconsciously pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them as the pale skin of her face flushed. "I-I like c-cinnamon rolls..."

"Is that it?" Naruto asked, sounding genuinely interested, as though an enjoyment of cinnamon rolls was the most amazing thing he'd ever heard.

"I also like... senzai," she added softly.

He shrugged. "Well, it's not ramen, but I suppose those are pretty good. What about crab, do you like crab?" These things were pretty simple, he knew, but it was good to start somewhere and he was getting hungry, so his mind had offered food as a good place to start the questioning.

"N-no, Naruto-kun, I'm sorry, but I don't like crab…"

"Any special hobbies?" he asked quickly.

Hinata couldn't help but glance over at him and was shocked by the sight that greeted her. Naruto had gone from looking moderately interested in what she was saying to staring intently at her, his eyes suddenly wide and almost scared; he seemed to literally be hanging on her every word. She'd never seen him this way. The closest he'd ever come to paying this sort of attention that she'd ever seen was when Iruka was explaining an interesting jutsu or telling the class stories from the old wars.

"N-nothing special," she admitted, "but… um, I sometimes like to… to press flowers…"

"Why?" There was an urgency in his voice that she didn't think she'd ever heard before, and it was mostly for that reason that she answered the very personal question.

"My… mother used to do it," Hinata whispered. She'd never told anyone about that, not even Hanabi. As far as she knew, only her father was aware of what her hobby meant to her, though he never said anything about it.

Naruto was quiet for a moment, chewing on his lip while he thought and then he gently asked, "How did your mother die?"

Hinata hugged her knees tightly and let her chin rest on them as her pearl-colored eyes stared at the water of the stream. "T-there were... complications... with her pregnancy with H-Hanabi-chan. T-the doctors wanted her to abort the pregnancy..." she could feel tears rising in her eyes and tried without success to push them away. For a long time she couldn't continue and Naruto never said a word to force her to, but when she felt certain that her voice would be steady enough to, she pushed on. "S-she refused... and then, after Hanabi-neechan was born… she died…"

"No way," Naruto whispered in a shaky voice, suddenly breathing hard. Hinata turned and looked just in time to see him run both hands through his spiky blonde hair. He had a look of complete and total disbelief on his face.

"Naruto-kun?"

Naruto's body began to shake and Hinata almost thought he might be crying. It was sweet, she thought, that he could empathize with her loss to such an extent. Sweet, but not exactly typical of the Naruto she knew. She was tempted to reach out and touch his arm, to let him know that as much as the loss of her beloved mother still hurt, she'd come to accept it and mostly focused on the few good memories she had from that long ago. Her hand twitched and she thought she might actually have the courage to do it, but then Naruto threw back his head and burst into maniacal laughter as he laid down and rolled around in the grass, pounding his fists into the ground.

She tried to not take it personally, but as his laughter continued unabated for several minutes Hinata couldn't help but feel hurt that he was laughing after she'd told him about her most painful memory, something that almost no one knew. Her father, herself, the clan elders, a few of the older members of the Branch house, and a select few from outside the clan, that was it. Not even Hanabi knew what their mother had done for her.

And after hearing it, after she'd been braver than she could ever remember having been and told him her most painful memory, after she'd been building up the courage to comfort him when she thought he was actually crying about it, all Naruto had done was laugh long and hard.

A wave of hot tears sprang to her eyes despite her attempts to hold them back. She'd never thought that Naruto would act like this, she never thought he'd act at all the way he'd been acting since she was caught spying on him. Maybe he was mad at her for watching him and this was his way of punishing her? It didn't seem like something he'd do, but it didn't matter, she needed to leave before she shamed herself than she already was with her tears. Without a word she rose to her feet and turned to leave as her hands wiped quickly at her tears.

Naruto didn't even notice her go; too overwhelmed was he with the joy – the euphoria – of the knowledge that all that he was seeing was actually real. Somehow, someway, for some reason, he really was in the past… maybe. It was possible, he guessed, that this was still more detail added to Orochimaru's trick, that somehow Sasuke, or Orochimaru, or some Sound nin had learned enough about Hinata to fool him and that Hinata had skillfully manipulated him into asking her about her…

Naruto sighed, his laughter dying down, and sat up. He supposed there wasn't a way to be perfectly sure about whether or not anything he was seeing was real, but he didn't really care anymore. If Orochimaru was willing to go to such extremes to fool him, he would just have to go with it. He couldn't escape the… whatever it was… and he couldn't figure his way out of it, so he was trapped… or free, if everything was real. He would just enjoy it while it lasted, assuming that it was real until there was proof to the contrary.

With one last chuckle he rose to his feet, got dressed, and glanced around. "Hinata-chan?"

No one answered and he didn't see her anywhere. That was odd. She'd been there just a moment ago. After a quick survey of the area failed to locate her, he shrugged and began to stumble towards his apartment.

ooo

That evening, with the initial rush of excitement having worn off, Naruto was forced to think about how he'd apparently found himself transformed into a child and transported roughly two decades back in time.

It only took him a few minutes to tire of the question and set it aside. He couldn't remember much of what had happened to him the day before – other than fighting Orochimaru and a few details about the battle that had engulfed Konoha – and even with what he could remember, none of it seemed to lead to him being sent to the past. He'd never even heard of _anything_ sending someone back in time. Assuming that it really had happened, it would just have to be one of those mysteries that had to be accepted… for now, at least.

In an effort to distract himself from an unsolvable mystery, his thoughts turned to what he was going to do to make sure that Konoha wasn't destroyed as it had been in the future. Sadly these thoughts proved to be just as frustrating. A thousand ideas swirled around in his head, some ludicrous, some feasible, and some probably impossible. So many people had suffered and died during his lifetime, and now he had the power and the opportunity to make everything perfect for them, but he wasn't sure how to do it. On top of that, the enormity of what he _could_ potentially do was overwhelming.

It was a long, dirty, sleepless night for Naruto and when morning finally came he was no closer to a real answer than he'd been when he finally fell into bed the night before. But, as frustrating as that was, it didn't matter. His friends were all alive once more. He had a second chance at getting things right.

Either that, or Orochimaru was laughing that irritating little laugh and jerking him around like a marionette.

o

o

A/N: You know when I wrote this chapter, I actually thought that I was being pretty clever by making up the word 'Uchihatard.' I don't spend any time on any Naruto forums or anything and didn't remember coming across it in any of the fanfics that I read, so as far as I knew I was the originator of the word. Then, as I was rereading this chapter I thought it would be interesting to google my amazing creation… just for fun. 0.73 seconds I found that I'm apparently not nearly as original as I thought… oh well, I'm pretty sure I came up with it on my own… even if I wasn't anywhere near the first to do so.

So, now Naruto knows or at least is willing to believe that he's really in the past. Hopefully his cluelessness wasn't too irritating, but I just couldn't see him accepting something like time travel without question – plus, it made Team Seven's first meeting a little more fun (at least for me). Updates won't usually be this quick (three in two days is a pace that I could never hope to keep up), but the next one should be up by Friday and after that I'll shoot for once a week, generally on either Friday or Saturday. That should be a more manageable pace, with the chapters being between 7000 and 10000 words long.


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

o

Very few of the newly graduated genin class slept well that night. Twenty-seven students had graduated, twenty seven students had heard the same basic message from nine jounin, and twenty-six students had vowed that they would be one of the nine taken as official genin (the twenty-seventh had other things on his mind at the time). Most of the graduates had gone home to their families that night and told them of the additional test to take place the following morning. Some had received advice from a parent or sibling who were or had been ninja at some point, others received a kind word of encouragement and assurance that they would do fine. Most were offered diner and a few even managed to accept it and keep it down despite their nerves. A few of the girls declined the diner offer because it was rumored that a certain boy – who was sure to pass, of course – only liked thin women.

Only one of the genin was completely unconcerned about the test the next day and that was only because he'd already passed it and because far more pressing matters were hanging so heavily over him that he could scarcely breathe.

Haruno Sakura spent her evening rolling her eyes at her mother and refusing to eat anything that was put in front of her. She'd had a light snack after returning home from the meeting with Kakashi and the rest of Team Seven, and that was more than enough food for her unless she wanted to look like her mother in another few years.

Her parents, unfortunately, didn't seem to understand how important it was for her to keep the pounds off. Her father had made a joke about how much her stealth skills would improve if she wasted away to nothing. This had caused her mother to declare Sakura too skinny for her own good as she added an extra portion to the plate full of food Sakura was already _not _eating. Only the fact that she really was very nervous and feeling a little queasy, and that it was readily apparent on her face, kept Sakura from having to eat her weight in pork and steamed vegetables. Once she'd escaped her family, she quickly made her way to her room and locked the door, refusing to come out for the rest of the night lest she find herself tied to a chair while her mother force-fed her some crackers and other foods meant to settle upset stomachs (and put a little weight on silly girls).

That night she went to bed early so she could wake up in time to make herself pretty for Sasuke and recheck the survival equipment she'd already packed for the test. Sleep did not come easy, and once it arrived she wished that it had just stayed away altogether. Horrific dreams of the one-eyed jounin grinning through his stupid mask as he informed her that she'd failed assaulted her as she tossed and turned violently under her cotton sheets and thin quilt. She saw Sasuke – who had passed with flying colors – scowling as he looked down his nose at her and shook his head in disappointment before wrapping an arm possessively around the slender waist of blond, perfect –and formerly Sakura's best friend – Yamanaka Ino. He then whispered something into the _floozy's_ ear that caused her to laugh playfully and glance in Sakura's direction as she planted a small kiss on the flawless skin of their mutual-crush's cheek.

Twice Sakura woke up in a cold sweat; her heart pounding until she realized that it was just a dream and that Sasuke could never like Ino-pig with her snooty, little nose, ugly, boring hair, and – admittedly – fashionable clothes that she only wore to showoff her family's modest wealth. Both times she assured herself that Sasuke would see right through Ino and would know what a shallow and annoying person she was. And yet, every time she closed her eyes she saw the same thing. She would fail miserably at all of the different tests Kakashi forced her to take, Sasuke would pass, and then Ino would show up looking smug and stealing Sakura's destined true love.

It was enough to drive a girl crazy and when her alarm finally, _mercifully_, went off, she was mentally exhausted and didn't feel like her body had gotten any rest at all. Her stomach growled irritably, but a light punch reminded it that there were more important things to think about than food. When she was _Uchiha_ Sakura, she promised to reward her stomach every time her beloved husband took her on a date to one of the expensive restaurants in the village.

Soon she was showered, dressed, and looking as good as she could make herself look after a night like the one she'd just had. Her light pink, canvas satchel was stuffed with anything and everything she thought might be required to make it through Kakashi's survival training test as well as several items purported in her favorite magazines to be useful in keeping herself looking nice even under less than ideal conditions.

Without a word to her thankfully-still-sleeping parents, Sakura made her way into the dimly lit day. She would be a little early, but it was important to show Sasuke and Kakashi how responsible and prepared she was, plus it would deny her mother another chance to try to feed her, which was always a good thing.

Sakura shifted the strap of her heavy bag until it was comfortable and then set out, determined to pass Kakashi's test and win Sasuke's heart.

ooo

In his expensive – yet somehow cold – apartment, Sasuke also woke early and prepared himself for Kakashi's survival training. He too had spent the night restlessly trying to get comfortable in his large bed and struggling to hold the nightmares at bay. By the time he finally awoke, his silk sheets clung to his sweaty body like flypaper and his dreams remained with him.

_"It would be worthless to kill someone like you… my foolish brother…"_

Even awake those words haunted him, echoing faintly in his ears as the ghost of his older brother's strange eyes floated in his mind. Those eyes, the Mangekyo Sharingan, always seemed to be on him, sometimes taunting him, sometimes frightening him, but always just ahead of him, unreachable and untouchable.

Sasuke ran his hands over his face, pushing his fatigue away, and then up through his dark, wet bangs as he took a deep breath and glanced at the clock beside his bed. It was earlier than he needed to wake, but not so early that he shouldn't get out of bed anyway, he had better things to do with his time than dreaming about the past that continued to dog his every footstep.

_"If you want to kill me… hate me! Curse me! Live a long and unsightly life. Run away. Run away… and cling to your pitiful life! And some day, when you have the same 'eyes' as me, come before me." _

Itachi's voice had been so calm when he spoke those words, as if he'd felt nothing for what he'd done to their clan… for what he'd done to their mother and father. He just calmly looked at his little brother who had always idolized him and strived to be as perfect at everything as he was and said those strange words that Sasuke had thought about every day since.

Sasuke quickly made his way to the bathroom and splashed water on his face to clear away the sticky feeling his sweat had left with him. He glanced at the mirror and frowned. How had Itachi felt when he became a genin?

He hated thinking about his brother, hated comparing himself to the bastard and yet he couldn't seem to stop doing it.

Had Itachi even been capable of feeling nervous about the test given to see if he was actually allowed to become a full-fledged genin or had he just been supremely confident in his skills knowing what a genius he was?

Probably the latter. After all, Itachi had only heard how amazing he was from their father every day of his life. It wasn't as if he would have been like the others in Sasuke's class, just looking happy to have graduated and pleased to be on a team. He was an Uchiha, he was bred to be the best and would have accepted nothing less than perfection and Sasuke was going to be exactly the same.

Itachi had been five years younger than Sasuke when he graduated, only seven years old and still top of his class. He'd been allowed to enter the Academy earlier, but that was just more proof of his genius.

Genin by seven, Sharingan master by eight, Chuunin by ten…

Of course, Itachi had been in an entirely different situation than Sasuke was. He'd grown up in the house of the leader of one of the most powerful clans in the village, not on the outskirts of a compound that was now as silent as a graveyard, with a clear view of the empty home he'd loved as a child. Itachi had grown up with a loving mother, a father who favored him, and a brother who idolized him. He hadn't spent half a decade as the last living member of his family, hearing the whispers as he walked down the streets. Itachi had always come home to a family that welcomed him happily, he hadn't ever had to come home and see his clan slaughtered and his parents murdered by the person he looked up to.

In short, Itachi hadn't grown up with_ Itachi_ as an older brother.

Sasuke wished he could say that his painful childhood had hardened him, made him stronger, but he wasn't so sure. He was better than everyone in his class, but he couldn't use the Sharingan yet… he might not even be capable of it. He'd heard rumors, before his clan was slaughtered, that the Sharingan sometimes failed to manifest, even in children who seemed quite talented. Itachi had already had it mastered for four years when he was Sasuke's age and Sasuke didn't even know what it felt like.

Itachi seemed _so_ far ahead! How was Sasuke supposed to make up that ground? How was he supposed to avenge his clan when he was stuck with two weaklings as team members?

He'd known as soon as Iruka had said the teams were designed to be even that he would be carrying his team until he could rid himself of them. He was the strongest of the class in every subject; it was natural that to balance the teams meant he had to be stuck with two far weaker teammates.

Sasuke allowed a weary sigh to escape his lips and then plucked his toothbrush out of the cup by the sink and began to clean himself up for the day.

Uzumaki Naruto and Haruno Sakura.

He supposed it could have been worse, but not by much. Naruto was a loud mouthed idiot who was too dumb and delusional to realize just how weak and pathetic he really was. The fact that he'd passed some sort of special test made it seem like the Academy was just trying to get rid of him – everyone knew most of the chuunin and jounin who ran the Academy hated him to some extent. The fact that even his minor offenses and harmless questions sparked their ire only reinforced the notion that they had put up with him for far too long and just wanted him gone.

He was deadweight that would just pull down whatever team he ended up on unless someone extremely talented was there to pick up the slack for him. Sasuke wished they could have offered that job to Aburame Shino or Tandoku Yousu, the two boys with the next highest average scores in the class.

In all likelihood, Naruto would get himself killed fairly quickly – which might also explain why he'd been allowed to graduate despite his horrendous lack of talent, though that seemed a bit cruel no matter how annoying Naruto was. He was too stupid to know when to shut up so he didn't get killed and too loud to manage it even if he realized what he needed to do. Sasuke would try to keep him alive as long as he could, especially if such actions helped him get reassigned quicker, but he doubted even _he_ could keep Naruto alive once their missions started involving life or death situations.

Sakura was actually rather smart, which only served to make it that much more disappointing to see how weak and dumb she was. Her weakness was obvious from just looking at her, but her test scores showed that she was intelligent despite all appearances to the contrary. Really, he didn't have many bad things to say about her outside of her lack of physical abilities. She followed him around like all of those other harpies, thinking that he actually cared about any of the ridiculous things they did to "impress" him, fighting amongst each other for the chance to be near him when all he wanted was for all them to go away and leave him alone. They were idiots, every last one of them, and Sakura's associations with them only proved that test scores did not always accurately judge intelligence.

Kakashi would be the key. Sasuke would have to impress him right away, let him see what he was capable of and pray that it was enough to prove that he should be removed from his weak team as quickly as possible and put somewhere more suited to his skills. He was an Uchiha, after all. His clan had been one of the elites… until Itachi…

No! He was an Uchiha, he was _the_ Uchiha. His clan was known for their strength in the past and even that would pale in comparison to the strength he would prove he could possess. He'd been called a genius for years and proven it during every test he'd ever taken. Now it would be time for all that potential to be realized. He would surpass his brother, avenge his clan, and then rebuild the Uchiha to be greater and stronger than they had ever been before.

But to do all that, he had to get away from the team he'd been saddled with and to do that, he had to impress Kakashi during the survival training.

As he brushed his teeth and dwelled on his brother, Sasuke slowly became aware of a stinging sensation in his left palm. Curious, he raised his hand and stared at it. His fist had clenched so tightly his fingernails had sliced into his palm… again. He turned on the water, spit the toothpaste out of his mouth, and then calmly set about cleaning his small wounds. It seemed something like this always happened when he thought about his brother… about that night…

He just couldn't control the rage he still felt. He buried it deep down during the day, when others were around, but when he returned home to his empty apartment and stepped out onto the balcony to watch the sun on his clan's vacant section of the village, he couldn't hold it in anymore. Digging his fingernails into his palm was fairly minor in comparison with some of the other things he'd accidentally done while thinking of what happened back then.

When he was satisfied that the bleeding had mostly stopped, he quickly checked his bag to make sure that he hadn't missed anything when he'd packed the nigh before and then hurried towards the training area Kakashi had told them to meet him at. He would be early, but it didn't really matter.

He could be alone out there or alone in here. At least out there he wouldn't be tempted to stare at the vacant buildings that had once housed his family and fellow clan members.

ooo

Naruto did not suffer from nightmares that night, nor did he wake early like his teammates. He probably would have had horrible dreams, waking up screaming or at the very least biting back a scream, and then would have rolled out of bed wearily once it became apparent that sleep wasn't where he needed to be, but he didn't.

None of those things happened to him because all of them required him actually falling _asleep_ first.

What Naruto did after his conversation with Hinata was head more or less straight back to his apartment – taking the occasional headlong spill into the ground, alleyway walls, old men playing shogi, and one pile of trash bags – pull off his still smelly and slightly wet jacket (not bothering with his pants or shirt), crawl into bed, and stare up at his cracked ceiling as the shadows swallowed up the room and then began to retreat again many hours later. He neither saw nor heard anything around him as all of his attention was on the unique – to his knowledge, at least – situation he found himself in.

Had any enemy ninja entered his apartment, tripped over his table, cursed loudly, realized they'd forgotten the tools of their trade, left to get those tools, and come back again later to kill him, he would have been a dead man… or child… or whatever he was.

After dwelling for a long time on what he could do to fix things, he'd eventually worked his way back towards the question of how he'd been transported back in time in the first place. After many hours of thought, it was still a mystery to him. He remembered fighting Orochimaru… and losing – much as he hated to admit it – but other than that things weren't very clear. He remembered the Mangekyo Sharingan… and the bodies of Hinata and that prick she'd had to marry… but that was about all the detail he could recall other than the fact that the village had obviously been attacked and was in the process of being even more destroyed than it already was after years of warding off attacks.

Once he'd tired of that subject, he again turned to the question of how sure he was that he truly was in the past and not stuck in a genjutsu or some other trick. This question actually grew easier to answer the more he thought about it, which was a pleasant change from the rest of his evening.

Even if he was trapped in a genjutsu, there was no way Orochimaru or Sasuke or anyone else from Otogakure would have known about Hinata's mother or any of those other things Hinata said. She just wouldn't have been important enough in their eyes to get that sort of information. On top of that, he doubted there was a genjutsu powerful enough to recreate everything from his childhood so accurately. Even things he'd forgotten about until seeing them again in this Konoha were perfect, it just wasn't possible. And the final part that officially made this – in his mind – real, was the fact that no one had attacked him besides two old men who didn't appreciate him ruining their shogi game with his clumsiness. Large, highly detailed genjutsu were extremely taxing on the caster's chakra reserves, Itachi's Tsukuyomi could only be used a few times and even then only for a few seconds each time, and this would be the biggest most highly detailed genjutsu Naruto had ever heard of and yet he was completely unmolested so far. No, this was definitely real, Naruto was sure of it… mostly… sort of…

It was the other question, the one that he kept coming back to over and over, that was the most difficult to answer, which explained why he spent so much time thinking about it. Unfortunately the question of how to make sure the future he came from was never allowed to happen only brought more questions with it. How much could he change? Could he actually change anything? What changes should he make assuming he actually could make real changes?

There were a lot of things in his life that he'd always wished that he'd done differently, or better, or not at all, but now that he had the chance to make those changes, he wasn't completely sure how to go about doing it.

On top of it all, he couldn't let anyone know who or what he was. He knew enough about the way the village worked to know that if he suddenly developed an amazing array of abilities, people would notice and start asking hard to answer questions. If they learned that he _thought_ he was from the future, he'd either end up strapped to a bed in the hospital for the rest of his life or would find himself sitting in a chair staring up at the scarred face of Morino Ibiki for the rest of a much shorter life… he wasn't even sure which of those scenarios was actually worst.

Naruto sighed and rubbed his hands against the strangely smooth skin of his face. He'd always been a baby face, but over the years had gradually built up the ability to at least grow some stubble. Now his face was back to its previous smoothness and he was rather glad for it. Being unable to grow a decent beard or goatee – and being reminded of it by several "friends" from time to time – took all of the fun out of having facial hair and turned it into just another chore that had to be done. He'd always thought having a beard like Asuma's would have been cool, but it was not to be. There were female members of the village council who could grow more facial hair in a week than Naruto could manage in three months.

And with that pleasant thought, Naruto sat up and yawned, deciding that it would be better to get going than sitting around trying to plan how he was going to live his life the second time through. He'd never been good at planning for the future, he'd always just sort of adlibbed it as he went along. It made him unpredictable – "the number one unpredictable ninja of Konoha," as Kakashi used to call him – but also meant that he had to rely heavily on his friends when in-depth plans were required.

The blond looked down at his orange pants and blue shirt and sighed forlornly. It would be obvious that he'd slept in his clothing, except for his jacket that was lying crumpled on the floor, and that he hadn't gotten the stink completely out of them, despite Hinata's best efforts. He would have to work on it again that evening, after he'd past Kakashi's little test, and his sheets would need a good cleaning as well.

Naruto stretched and scratched himself lazily as he headed into the small kitchen and opened the door to the beat up refrigerator.

"Ugh, I'd forgotten how bad it was," he groaned as he stared at the measly pickings. The milk was obviously bad, he could smell it the moment he opened the door. At one time in his life, he probably would have figured that it was _close enough_ to good and drank some – having heard of the importance of calcium and vitamin D early in his Academy days – you just had to hold a fork up to keep the chunks from ending up in your cup and it was fine…

There was a half eaten apple, but it was shriveling up and turning brown, and Naruto wasn't sure if he'd be able to actually force himself to eat it. The rest of the items in the refrigerator were either unidentifiable, unappealing, or both so he shut it in disgust and began to search the rest of the kitchen for some decent food. It was strange to realize how spoiled he'd become once he actually had friends who looked out for him. As a child he wouldn't have minded his lack of options, he might have even thought he was eating pretty well, but after years of living off the home cooking Hinata occasionally brought for him, having had the chance to sample some of Sakura's more edible attempts at meals, and being invited to have dinner and lunch with the families of other friends he'd had his eyes opened to what a homemade meal was supposed to be… and it wasn't going to be found in this refrigerator. Fortunately he only had to open two cabinet doors before he hit the jackpot.

Six unopened, beautiful cups of instant ramen sat before him.

The oven couldn't heat the water fast enough. In mere minutes Naruto was pouring the boiling water into one of the cups and inhaling the intoxicating scent of his favorite food as the water softened the noodles and released their trapped aroma.

With a heartfelt "Itadakimasu!" he dug his chopsticks into the beautiful noodles and brought them up to his watering mouth… and then paused.

He wasn't supposed to eat. Kakashi had told them not to and the first time around he had obeyed. Normally, Naruto would have simply thought "_screw you_" at the jounin and enjoyed his less-than-healthy breakfast, but there was a problem in doing that. His team had passed Kakashi's test the first time around and they needed to pass again or everything would get really screwed up. If they didn't pass the test, they wouldn't be Team Seven, and if they weren't Team Seven they wouldn't go to Wave Country, and if they didn't go to the Wave Country they might not be entered into the Chuunin Exam, and if they didn't take the Exam, Naruto wouldn't have met Gaara and Jiraiya, and if he didn't meet Jiraiya, Tsunade-baa-chan might not become the Hokage…

No, he had to do everything just like he had before. He couldn't remember all the details from way back then perfectly, but he had to be close enough to get the same outcome. If he started changing things that didn't need to be changed, everything could be ruined.

With a heavy heart, Naruto let his chopsticks sink into the steaming bowl of noodles and then picked up his ramen, carried it to the sink and mournfully poured it out. Watching the noodles and broth slide down the drain and out of sight was nearly the saddest thing he'd ever seen… well, actually, not even close, but it was the saddest thing he'd seen since waking up in the past and that was enough.

Naruto let out a forlorn sigh and cast a longing glance back at the cupboard that held the wondrous stash of ramen, and then headed out the door and towards the training grounds. If he was going to be hungry, he might as well be hungry somewhere that didn't have a ready supply of ramen softly calling out to him like a siren amongst the rocks.

ooo

Naruto was the last member of Team Seven to arrive at the training grounds, having been delayed numerous times by trips and stumbles as his too-short body was unable to comply with the instructions of a brain used to wielding far longer and more powerful limbs. He was, at least, encouraged by the fact that his stumbles were occurring less frequently than they had the previous day. Slowly but surely his mind was adapting to its new – or old – body… though the key word there was _s-l-o-w-l-y_.

So long as he remained totally focused on his movements he was generally fine. Unfortunately it was really hard to keep thinking about the correct distance for each step, how quickly his arms were moving, or the distance from his hand to his face. Those sorts of movements were instinctive for a reason: they were boring.

Of course, tripping and falling on top of a little, old woman out for an early morning stroll, being called a pervert, and getting hit repeatedly until an escape was managed were the results of his inattention – along with even dirtier clothes, a mouthful of mud, and a severely bruised ego – so perhaps he should have been able to put a little more effort into watching what he was doing. It was just so hard for him to pay attention when he kept seeing buildings that had been destroyed years earlier suddenly returned to their former glory and people that had been killed during one of the many attacks on the village going about their business as if there was nothing strange about it – and for them, he supposed, there _wasn't_.

When he finally made it to the training grounds, his teammates looked as though they'd already been there for awhile. Sasuke was sitting at the base of a tree, his satchel placed between his bent legs, his arms resting on his knees, and a bored expression on his face. A gentle breeze played with his long, dark bangs, causing them to sway in front of his face in a way that Naruto had to admit appeared to be simultaneously unintentional and unquestionably cool-looking. Seeing his old friend as he had been and being unaffected by the jealousy that had often dictated his actions and views as a young man, Naruto could see what the girls liked about the Uchiha. He was handsome, or at least Naruto assumed that he was – finding it a bit unpleasant to think of another guy as 'handsome' – and something about his perpetual brooding made him seem mysterious and aloof. His features were almost delicate from one angle, but then hard as ice from another.

"What are you looking at, dobe?" Sasuke asked, noticing Naruto's stare.

"I just realized why all the girls liked... er, _like _you," Naruto replied with a grin.

"Hn," the seated boy snorted, "don't get any ideas, I don't swing that way."

Naruto opened his mouth to protest, or perhaps to challenge Sasuke to a fight, but before he could say anything Sakura yelled, "Quit bothering Sasuke, idiot!"

Sasuke rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath before turning his head away from his teammates and looking up at the branches above him as the early morning sunlight danced in the leaves.

Naruto frowned and glanced in Sakura's direction. "I think you're bothering him more than me," he retorted before he could stop himself.

Sakura's eyes hardened dangerously and her lips pulled back to reveal her clenched teeth as she advanced on him. It could have been his imagination, but Naruto thought that he might have even heard her knuckles popping as her hands squeezed into fists.

"Ah… ha ha… Sakura-chan… don't do anything you'll regret later," he said gesturing placatingly with his hands.

"I won't regret this," she announced in a deadened voice. "You've had this coming for a long time…"

"Sakura-chan, I… I don't want to hurt you," he tried again, his arms relaxing slightly as he prepared to defend himself, "but if you try to hit me…"

He knew there was going to be power behind her fist, there always was, but it came at him so pitifully slow it was almost hard to take it seriously. As a child, he'd often been blindsided by such attacks, his eyes unable to follow them, but this time he could see it coming with ease. His right arm shot out instinctively to knock her fist away…

…but his hand didn't travel far enough to make contact with her arm. A half-second later, her fist slammed into his head, sending him tumbling through the grass and dirt.

For a long minute, Naruto lay in a heap, covered in grass and dust and not moving, perhaps not even breathing. Then he coughed, spitting sod from his mouth, and rolled onto his back, one hand coming up to rub his aching face.

"Damn it, Sakura-chan," he grumbled, gingerly touching the large lump that was already forming on his head as he sat up, "I forgot you were such a…"

"What was that?!?" the pink haired kunoichi snarled as she rounded on him again, her eyes twitching.

Naruto swallowed the comment instantly and smiled innocently up at her. "Nothing."

"Make sure it stays that way."

Naruto nodded hastily, not wanting anything more to do with her angry side until his body was working properly. It was actually, in a vague and mostly made-up-so-he'd-feel-better-about-himself sort of way, a good thing that she'd punched him. He'd been able to see her fist coming and could have dodged it or blocked it if his arms and legs would consistently do what he asked of them. Seeing how much of a hindrance his body was going to be in battle helped him see what he would have to work on first. After all, it would be difficult to save all of his friends if he was constantly tripping and misjudging distances. It also worked as a convenient excuse to not start trying to make any changes right away since he had no idea where to begin.

His blue eyes followed Sakura as she once again attempted to strike up a conversation with Sasuke and met only silence, small grunts, and a few one word answers. As a child, Naruto had suspected that Sasuke secretly enjoyed Sakura's attention and even encouraged it, but looking at it now, he saw nothing but annoyance from the dark haired boy. Perhaps it just hadn't started yet, or maybe he'd seen something that wasn't there because he'd wished that it was _him_ she'd paid so much attention to.

Whichever was the case, Sasuke looked to Naruto like he just wanted to be left alone… which was exactly what couldn't happen. If Sasuke was allowed to be the loner that he wanted to be, then he would be that much more willing to leave the village in search of power in less than a year. Sasuke's ties to the village had been nearly severed by his brother's betrayal and then the last few were ripped away by Orochimaru and the curse seal. What he needed was a few stronger ties. Naruto liked to think that he had been one, but if he was, it wasn't enough. Sasuke needed something more than a little brother and a semi-rival, he needed…

Naruto wasn't sure what his friend needed, but he would have to figure it out quickly. If he didn't and things went the same at the Chuunin Exam as they had the first time around, he would have to do what was needed to protect the village.

Even if it meant killing one of his best friends.

It was a chilling thought and Naruto hated himself for even thinking it, but it was true nonetheless. He would kill Sasuke before allowing him to betray the village a second time, especially after having lived through the consequences.

Naruto pushed those thoughts from his mind quickly and vowed to only worry about the here and now for the time being. The Chuunin Exam was still a long ways off and he would come up with a plan before then, it was as simple as that. Right now the most important thing to think about was getting his mind back in control of his body.

For the next two hours Naruto sat cross-legged on the ground, bringing one arm up slowly until it was where he wanted it and then lowering it back down, over and over again, slightly faster each time. Once he thought he had the timing down he would work on the other arm until he was satisfied with that one, then he would return to first arm and see if he still remembered how to move it… and was disappointed when he found himself nearly back at square one. It wasn't that he couldn't figure it out, his head knew more or less how to move his body after the first several times he worked through the movement, but his instincts still wanted to use his larger form and instincts that had been built up over the years couldn't be trained out of him with just a few minutes or even a few hours of work.

After he gave up on his arms he stood up and began pacing, measuring his footsteps at one speed and then at another, always keeping his eyes down on them to make sure he didn't trip or try to take a larger step than he was capable of.

Sakura and Sasuke – who was now up in a tree to avoid having to talk with anyone – watched his antics curiously for a while before eventually passing it off as just another Naruto-being-weird moment; there had been plenty of them over the years.

Sakura told him to just sit still at one point, but he didn't even look up at her or reply, and she couldn't work up enough anger to do anything about it. The truth was that she was getting restless as well. Kakashi was now over two hours late and she'd gotten to the meeting spot almost an hour early. Were Sasuke not around, she would have taken up pacing and fidgeting as well. He was around, however, and she didn't want to annoy him or be seen acting like Naruto. So instead she sat at the base of the tree Sasuke was in and dozed while watching Naruto.

ooo

Kakashi had woken long before any of his genin, he was already at the Heroes' Monument before the sky had changed with the coming of dawn, and he was still there when he noticed that his students had made their way to the spot he'd told them to meet him at, just on the other side of the trees that surrounded the cenotaph.

His instructions had been for them to meet him at seven-thirty, but all three had shown up early… just like he would have when he was fresh out of the Academy. He could have gone and seen them at anytime, but he didn't. After realizing that they were there waiting for him, his body seemed to try to pull him towards them, desperate to be close to on time for once, but he resisted, forcing himself to stare at his friend's name, tracing it with his eyes over and over.

The large stone was exactly as it had always been: cold and smooth, somehow simultaneously seeming to reflect the growing light of the morning and suck in all of the light around it. Kakashi knew it was just his imagination that it did this, brought on by the fact that he knew a great many of the names that were carved into its glossy surface, but the stone gave him the creeps and he hated it. Still, every morning – and occasionally during the evening as well – he came and stood before it until he was late to wherever he was supposed to go, punishing himself for the person he once was and recalling in near perfect detail the mission that claimed his best friend's life.

"I've got a new team, Obito," he whispered. "Hokage-sama asked me to take them, just like he does every year, and I had to say yes. One of them is from your clan and another is supposedly a loud-mouth dumbass… that's why Hokage-sama gave them to me. I doubt they'll pass though, the loud one followed me all over the village yesterday when we were supposed to head straight to the Academy and never even asked why we kept wandering around in circles."

Kakashi let out a soft sigh and looked up at the sun overhead, noting that it was approaching eleven already. "Three hours should be about right, don't you think? I thought about telling them that I was helping an old lady who'd gotten lost, but I've decided just to go with the 'my alarm clock broke' routine. The old lady one is sort of special. I was always fond of that one when you used it… no, actually, it drove me crazy when you used it, but I'm fond of it now… it was the last excuse for being late that I ever got to hear you give."

He turned and began walking towards his team, calling over his shoulder, "I'll see you tomorrow and let you know how badly it went."

ooo

Another thirty minutes had passed before the sound of movement through the bushes caught the attention of two of the three genin – Naruto continued his strange pacing and didn't even bother looking away from his feet at the noise. Sasuke and Sakura looked up just in time to see Kakashi step into the clearing, a small backpack on his back and a little skip in his steps.

"Hey guys, good morning!" he said with a happy wave.

"You're late!" Sakura yelled back, seeing red. If Kakashi wasn't going to show up until after ten, why had he told them to meet him there at seven-thirty!

"Oh, yeah, sorry about that," he chuckled, not sounding very sorry at all. "My alarm clock broke and I over slept."

"By three hours?" Sakura asked in disbelief and then added in a whisper that she didn't realize he could hear, "What sort of jounin are you?"

Kakashi's eye shifted away from her and she could imagine the corners of his mouth twitching under his mask. "Hmm, anyway, come over here and we'll get started."

He signaled for them to follow him and then led them down a small path through the woods that led to an open space surrounded by trees on three sides with a small river on the fourth. Three wooden posts were stuck into the ground near the path with a large, cut stone monument just beyond them. Kakashi removed a small black alarm clock with golden bells from his backpack and set it on the middle post (Sakura noted that this clock seemed to be working just fine and was set to the correct time) before pressing a button on top of it, setting the alarm.

The jounin then turned towards the three young ninja and held up his hand, two silver bells dangled from two pieces of string. "Here are two bells," Kakashi informed them needlessly. "Your task is to take these from me before noon. Those who cannot get a bell by noon will get no lunch." He smiled through his mask at them, "I'll not only tie you to one of these posts, but I'll eat right in front of you."

Right on cue all three genins' stomachs growled loudly and Kakashi looked even more pleased as he watched realization dawn on two of the three. Naruto either didn't notice or didn't care, but he smiled knowingly as he too glanced at his teammates. For a moment Kakashi wondered if the boy had figured out the reason for the rule and still went without eating, but dismissed the idea just as quickly. Everything he'd heard about Naruto said that the boy was hopelessly clueless, his boundless energy making him unable to concentrate long enough to fully understand even the simplest of puzzles or instructions.

Of course, if one read between the lines of many of those reports it wasn't difficult to see a rather intense dislike of the boy coloring the opinions of most of his teachers, but if he'd figured it out, he should have eaten like an intelligent person.

"You only need to get one bell," he continued, allowing his thoughts on Naruto to slip to the back of his mind. "Obviously there are only two, so one of you will definitely be tied to a stump and the person who doesn't take a bell… fails." Kakashi gave the strings a small tug and the bells tinkled tauntingly at his potential students. "At least one of you is headed back to the Academy no matter what."

Once again he watched their faces carefully as they realized what he was saying, this time Sakura inhaled sharply at the news, Sasuke's eyes narrowed… and once again Naruto seemed not to care very much.

Kakashi's hand closed around the bells and he stood up a little straighter. "Use your shrunken and whatever else you want. You won't succeed unless you come at me with the intent to kill."

"But… but you'll be in danger!" Sakura objected.

Naruto looked down at the kunai holster on his right thigh, judging the distance carefully, and then let his fingers slip into it. The moment they closed around the ring of one of his kunai, he drew it out and flipped it underhanded at Kakashi with surprising speed, though little accuracy.

Kakashi watched it sail over his shoulder, missing him by a good ten centimeters, and then turned back to the group. "Well, he doesn't have much aim, but at least Mr. Dead Last has got the right idea. Trust me, the only ones in danger out here are you three, so I'll say it again: if you don't come at me with the intent to kill, you stand no chance of getting a bell."

Naruto scowled at the "Mr. Dead Last" comment, but more so at his aim. He'd done such a good job getting his hand into the holster, but it still wasn't good enough. He had to be able to do it without thinking and he had to be able to use his weapons accurately. In his current state, he stood no chance against Kakashi or anyone else for that matter.

Fortunately, he didn't have to beat Kakashi today, he just had to make sure that everything happened the way it had before and they would be fine... well, maybe not the butt poking thing. He didn't care how much it screwed up the timeline, Naruto was _not_ going to let Kakashi do _that_ a second time.

"We'll start when I say," Kakashi continued. "Ready... start!"

o

o

A/N: I know I said the next update would be on Friday, but I couldn't help myself, I'd forgotten that reviews are more addictive than crack. I think I checked my email about once an hour, every hour, during the past two days. Plus there's now an email that lets the author know when a story is added to favorites or story alert. It isn't quite as nice as a review, but it's still nice to see that someone besides me is enjoying the story so far. I know this goes without saying, but I really enjoy reviews, the longer, the better, even if they aren't just about how wonderful and perfect my story is (not that I complain about those so long as you're being honest). Tell me what you liked, what you didn't, any mistakes that you might have caught (especially if it involves me getting facts or back stories messed up, because I hate making those sorts of errors)… whatever, I don't care. I just like getting them because I'm an addict and if I don't get my hit, I start getting the shakes… well, not really, but I _do_ enjoy them. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, the next one really won't be up until Friday and from then on it's really going to be a once a week thing (these early chapters have been proof read and fixed a couple of times, but the rest are still a bit rough). If you feel up to it, let me know what you thought.


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

o

IMPORTANT: For some reason, when you click on the next chapter button, you might be redirected to a Sailor Moon Story. I have no idea why this is happening, but I think the problem is with the site, certainly the proper chapter five is still in my account and comes up when I use Live Preview, so I don't know what else it could be. Anyway, just know that's what's happening. If that is still happening, you can either skip that chapter (some important things happen, but nothing too huge) and go onto the next one or just wait a little while for the tech guys to - _hopefully_ - fix it and read it then.

o

"We'll start when I say," Kakashi continued. "Ready... start!"

As they had the first time around, Sasuke and Sakura were instantly off and moving into a hiding position. Naruto also duplicated his actions from the first time he took the test, remaining where he was and looking at his future... or past... sensei. This time around, however, it was more because he didn't trust himself not to smash headlong into a tree or impale himself on a branch than a desire to prove his own worth.

Had he thought about it, it might have occurred to him that it was a good idea to do what he had done before since it worked out well for him the first time around, but he didn't think about it.

"One of the Ninja Basics is to be able to hide yourself well," Kakashi said in a bored voice, his one eye half-closed and his hands in his pockets, "so what exactly are you doing?"

Naruto shrugged and looked around. "It's not like you don't know where they are," he pointed out, "or at least, I _hope_ you know where they are, since I do and I'm only a genin," he glanced towards the tall oak tree that he'd seen shake as Sasuke moved along its branches. "Besides, I'm not scared of you."

Kakashi's eyebrow rose, but the expression on his face remained just as bored as ever. Naruto wanted to laugh and cry at the same time as he watched Kakashi with an insight he wished he'd had the first time around. The posture, the hand in the pocket, the half-closed eyelid, the slack face... they all worked perfectly together to convey his apparent total disrespect for whoever he was facing. It was no wonder Maito Gai found Kakashi so irritating when they had their 'battles.'

"If you aren't scared, then why don't you come get a bell?" Kakashi asked with a yawn.

Naruto hesitated for a moment as he tried to remember everything about this first test that he could… sadly, his memory offered very little information. So much had happened to him in such a short period of time that he'd never sat down and really tried to commit any of it to memory… what was the point when so many other exciting and 'memorable' things were going on around him?

He did remember fighting with Kakashi on this day, however, and he also remembered the painful and humiliating outcome of that short, one sided battle. He was not letting Kakashi do _that_ to him again. But if he didn't fight Kakashi because he knew he was sure to lose thanks to the small body he still hadn't completely mastered, would everything else still happen the way it had the first time around? What if he didn't fight and the three of them ended up failing and being sent back to the Academy and were split up the next time around? How could he protect his best friends if he never actually got to know them?

Perhaps he could avoid having Kakashi violate him _that_ way a second time and still keep things going the way they were supposed to. He'd have to fight the jounin, but so long as he avoided the "Super Powerful Ass-Poke'' – as Sakura so deftly named it – it wouldn't be too bad.

Plus, Kakashi had once told him that it hadn't been until the Wave Country mission that he had really started to see Naruto's potential as a ninja. Up until that point he'd been just another loudmouth who tried hard – sort of – but basically just screwed everything up. It wasn't that he hadn't liked Naruto, far from it actually, he hadn't been able to see past the jokes and _apparent_ stupidity to see what a powerful ninja the blond could become. Naruto supposed that as long as he didn't pull out anything too fancy… or advanced… or previously unheard of… it wouldn't hurt anything to show off just a little, it wasn't like he was going to use demon chakra or summon a frog or anything. If he could impress him today, perhaps he could speed the respect process up a little and take just a tiny bit of the spotlight from Sasuke so that it wouldn't be such a shock to his friend later.

It could work, he decided, but really, after the frustrating past two days, the annoying lack of control of his body, and the fact that people who would someday be his friends or at least respect him all looked down their noses at him as though he were something nasty the dog had dragged in, left him spoiling for a fight anyway.

Naruto pointed a finger at Kakashi and yelled, "I'm going to make you see just how amazing I'm going to be, sensei! And then someday you'll get to tell you little grandbabies that you helped train the Rokudaime Hokage while they sit on your lap wearing weird masks, their hitai-ates covering one eye, and their grey hair sticking up all over the place!" He grinned confidently, certainly more confidently than he felt, and cracked his neck as his muscles tensed, preparing to launch him into action… or a tree, depending on how well he concentrated.

"I'll have you know that my hair is silver, not grey," Kakashi retorted as he reached behind him into the canvas pouch hanging from his belt and pulled out an orange book with a picture on the cover of a young man chasing after a woman with a larger chest than her shirt was meant to carry. "Come whenever you like, it's been a while since I've taught Taijutsu, but from what I've heard of you, you could probably use the lesson."

Naruto smiled even wider at the sight of _Icha Icha Paradise_ and the memories that suddenly flashed through his mind of his time with Jiraiya. He reached down into his kunai holster and placed his middle finger through the rings of three of the throwing knives. With a flick of his wrist, all three kunai shot straight in the… _general_ direction of Kakashi.

The first two that left his finger fell short of their target, landing in the grass a good meter before Kakashi would even have had to think about moving. The last came off with a little more velocity, but left his hand too late and landed in the bushes way to the left of the jounin… actually, the only person Naruto came close to hitting was Sakura who was left staring wide eyed at the blade buried in the dirt right in front of her nose.

"Eh, sorry, Sakura-chan," Naruto called out as the bush shook with not-quite-suppressed rage.

"Are you sure you want to be a ninja?" Kakashi asked, never looking up from his book. "You seem to be more dangerous to your teammates than you are to your enemies."

Naruto scowled, his hands clenching into tight fists. "Ah, shut up Kakashi-sensei, that was just an accident. Give me a few days of practice and I won't ever miss again," he shot back.

"I don't think even a few _years_ of practice will help your aim. Are you sure you're going to be the Rokudaime? Perhaps you should be aiming to become the Hachidaime… though even that might not give you enough time to become competent."

Naruto's scowl deepened and his annoyance grew despite his knowledge that he was being suckered into attacking. Being underestimated and looked down upon was one of those things that he just couldn't abide no matter who it was coming from or how much of it was made to provoke a response from him. With a burst of chakra to his legs he raced towards his teacher, bringing his hands together as he called out, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"

Five Narutos leaped into the air and descended upon Kakashi who merely giggled lecherously and turned the page. A single Naruto held back watching as the others attempted to land a blow on their future teacher and friend…

…and _attempt_ was about as far as they really got.

Two of the clones collided as they came down on him, one having misjudged his leg strength and the other having just chosen a bad angle, and vanished in a poof of smoke as the other three managed to at least hit the ground properly. The next two disappeared as they punched from either side of Kakashi only to have the jounin kneel down and tightened the strap on one of his sandals. And the fifth met his end when he sent a beautiful kick at Kakashi's face, but misjudged the distance and hit nothing but air. The momentum of the kick threw him off balance and he slipped on the grass, falling back and cracking his head against a stone on the ground.

Kakashi didn't even bother commenting on Naruto's ineptitude this time around, he merely continued to read in silence.

The final Naruto rolled his eyes and dashed at the gray haired jounin, vowing to at least land one blow before the fight was over.

He started out with a punch at Kakashi's head, which was easily blocked with a single hand. The momentum of the block dictated a kick out of Naruto and he gladly obliged, spinning in the air and sending his foot straight for Kakashi's neck. Kakashi ducked casually and Naruto's spin carried him down to the ground.

"Damn it!" the boy growled as a kunai fell from his holster. His feet hit the grass for only a split second before he once again shot towards his now crouching teacher, one fist raised. It was as his fist started forward that he saw Kakashi's leg muscles flex as chakra was pushed into them. The blond ninja's bright blue eyes watched in horror as the jounin sidestepped the attack and moved behind him, still crouching, his fingers coming together as if he were forming a tiger seal.

Kakashi had led him by the nose through the whole fight. His every stance, every block, every movement had pushed Naruto into the spot he now found himself in.

Off balance, with his butt just asking for the pain it was about to receive.

"Naruto!" Sakura yelled from the pushes, her voice terrified. "Get out of there!! You're going to get killed!"

Naruto instinctively turned towards the bushes, feeling as though he were moving in slow motion.

"It's already too late," Kakashi whispered from behind him as he brought his arms back and prepared to strike. "Hidden Leaf Ancient Taijutsu Supreme Technique: A Thousand Years of Death!!!"

His arms shot up and into Naruto's butt, lifting the boy off the ground for just a second, and then the blond vanished into a cloud of smoke.

Kakashi's eye widened. "What the?!?"

The kunai that had fallen from Naruto's holster before his final attack disappeared just as the blond in the air did, revealing a safe and unviolated Naruto. The blond lifted a kunai and held it to the jounin's back as he reached out to snatch a bell from his belt.

"Sorry, sensei, but I'm not as dumb as you think I am," he grinned.

"No," a voice replied from behind him as the bell in his hand and the Kakashi in front of him disappeared, "but you're close. Hidden Leaf Ancient Taijutsu Supreme Technique: A Thousand Years of Death… Redux!!!"

Naruto had only a split second to look shocked before pain ripped through his butt and he was sent flying into the stream. As he sank into its depths, clutching his butt and yelling unintelligible curses that appeared as nothing more than bubbles, he could only wonder why he had fallen prey to the move again, even knowing more or less what was going to happen. He had never been one to believe in fate, but for the briefest of moments, he couldn't help but wonder if such a thing actually existed.

Kakashi watched the bubbles on the surface of the water until they slowed and then vanished. He didn't look away until a moment later when he saw an oddly colored object begin to swim downstream and towards the shore.

"Well, I hope he knows how to swim," he commented just loud enough to be overheard by the two genin hiding in the bush and tree, "if not then I might not get to fail anyone today."

ooo

Sasuke watched until it became apparent that Naruto wasn't going to resurface and then quietly made his way into the surrounding area to set up his trap. Kakashi was clearly too fast and too strong to be taken down by normal means, there would have to be some brains behind any attack against him.

As he silently tied back branches and slipped a few kunai into them, he thought back on Naruto's fight with Kakashi. Naruto had been shockingly good… at least compared to what Sasuke had expected out of him. The fact that he could produce a solid clone at all was pretty impressive. To create six and transform himself to avoid an attack was nothing short of amazing.

And yet, Kakashi hadn't been fooled even for a second. He'd toyed with Naruto, let him think that he had succeeded, and then humiliated him. Naruto had been stupid to leave himself open to any sort of attack, just assuming that his simple little plan would be enough to win him a bell. He knew a powerful jutsu, but he was too dumb to think through his strategy far enough to actually use his jutsu affectively.

Sasuke's lips pulled back into a smile as he tied off another branch, this little test was perfect. Sakura and Naruto stood no shot of getting a bell, which meant that they would both have to go back to the Academy. All he had to do was get a bell and he'd be free of them.

The last of his trap secured, he quietly moved back to his hiding spot to watch Kakashi for an opening. The means of achieving his ambition was so close he could taste it.

It only took a moment for him to see what he was looking for. Kakashi yawned and tilted his head to the side, rubbing the stiffness out of his neck, and then stretched as he let out another yawn.

Sasuke drew his weapons so fast they almost seemed to have appeared in his hands by magic. With perfect accuracy, he let them fly and watched with satisfaction as they hit their target in the back…

Only to have Kakashi vanish in a puff of smoke as a kunai riddled log fell to the ground.

_'Damn it! He knows where I am!'_ the Uchiha thought as he scurried away from his hiding spot.

ooo

Kakashi's flippant treatment of Naruto's possible demise drove a stake of fear through Sakura's heart. Was it possible that their jounin was allowed to kill them during this test? It hadn't said anything about that in any of the books she'd read, nor had anyone told her about the dangers of trying to become a ninja (they'd warned her about the dangers _after_ she was a ninja, but not _before_). This test was barbaric! How could the village allow such a thing to take place?

She hoped that Naruto was still alive; swimming was part of basic training, after all, but at the moment that wasn't really her concern. She needed to find Sasuke.

After his failed attack on Kakashi – which had also scared her for a moment when she thought it might have succeeded in killing the jounin – she had hurried out of her hiding place to look for him. Kakashi would have figured out where he was at from the path of the kunai and would be attacking him next, no doubt. If she could help him, or even save him, it was sure to do wonders for their relationship.

She tried to remain hidden, dashing from bush to bush and tree to tree, but it was difficult to look for someone when you were hiding and finally she gave it up for lost and simply hurried as quietly as possible through the woods, wishing she had shorter hair so it wouldn't keep getting snagged on low hanging branches.

_'Sasuke-kun,'_ she thought as she ran, _'where could you be?'_ And then a sickening thought struck her. _'What if Kakashi-sensei has already gotten Sasuke-kun?'_

No, she wouldn't believe that. She _couldn't_ believe that. Sasuke was the best, that sort of thing couldn't possibly have happened to him! Sakura glanced around a tree as she raced past it and stopped in her tracks before diving back behind the trunk for cover. Kakashi was standing just a little ways away, calmly turning a page in the orange book he'd been reading while he fought Naruto. She chanced another peek at him and sighed with relief, he was still standing there, apparently not aware that she was so close by.

"Sakura, behind you," Kakashi's voice whispered in her ear.

She glanced over her shoulder just in time to see the jounin form a seal with his hands and then the world seemed to vanish in a swirl of leaves.

ooo

Naruto pulled himself up onto the rocky ledge of the river and sighed. His clothes were completely soaked again. He'd forgotten how much it sucked getting wet when you only had a few pairs of clothes and what was worse, the water seemed to intensify the stench that still clung to them from the day before.

On top of all that, his ass hurt like nothing else. Kakashi had long, bony fingers and even though they – thankfully – hadn't ripped through his pants and actually impaled his butt, those hard fingers still left him feeling really sore.

Naruto once again tried to think back to the first time he'd gone through this day and remember how things were supposed to go, but the memory was foggy after years of important – and tragic – memories being built up. He remembered passing, after seeming to fail, and he remembered why they passed, but the specifics were vague now. It had only been important that they'd passed, not what he'd said and how he'd acted during each and every event.

He was certain that he'd gotten tied to the post for some reason, but the memory of what that reason was had been lost (or repressed) over the years.

Fortunately for him, and for the hope of a better future, he was an expert at winging it.

It didn't matter how he did it really, he just had to end up tied to the post – that was key. If he was tied to the post, then presumably everything else would work out the way it was supposed to. Kakashi would berate them for their stupidity, Sasuke and Sakura would give him some food, and then Kakashi would pass them. How hard could it be?

With a strange feeling of impending doom, Nartuo pulled his jacket off, twisted it to wring out the water, and then laid it out on the grass to dry as he sat down next to it. He rested his elbow on his knee and propped his chin up on his hand as he thought. He needed to do something to get himself in trouble and while he could think of plenty of ideas for trouble making – having spent so many years as a prankster – he couldn't think of anything that was sure to leave him tied to the post.

Before he had a chance to figure it out, he heard Sakura's voice cry out in alarm from somewhere in the woods. In an instant he was on his feet and running towards the sound, leaving his jacket lying in the grass.

ooo

"Sa…kura…"

Sakura spun on her heals at the sound of Sasuke's voice.

"Saku…ra…" It was coming from the other side of a large bush next to a tree.

"Sasuke-kun!!" she yelled happily as she hurried towards it. She pushed through the leaves and then stopped dead in her tracks.

Sasuke was on his knees before her, one hand resting on the tree to hold himself up. His left leg was twisted backwards at the knee, his left arm was severed at the elbow, and dozens of shuriken and kunai were piercing his once-perfect body. Blood poured from his stump of an arm, the weapon wounds, and from his mouth, staining his clothing red and pooling on the forest floor beneath him.

"Sakura…" he gasped, somehow speaking despite the kunai that had pierced his cheek, "…Help me…"

Sakura stared at his broken form, frozen, as tears welled up in her eyes. Despite his pleas for help, she knew that his injuries were fatal. Would it fall to her to tell him that? Would she have to hold him and watch his life drain out of him? She felt bile heave in her stomach and then did what came natural. She let out a loud piercing cry of terror and fainted.

From a tree branch above her, Kakashi glanced up from his book and observed his handiwork.

"I might have gone a little too far," he admitted to no one in particular. His one eye scanned the area around him and located the last member of his potential team. He leaped silently from his tree branch, prepared to end everything once and for all.

ooo

Sasuke heard the scream as he finished putting the final touches on his trap and rose to his feet.

"That scream," he whispered, his brows knit, "…that was Sakura."

"Ninja fighting, Lesson two: Genjutsu," Kakashi said from just behind the Uchiha genius. "Sakura fell for it easily."

A disgusted smirk pulled at Sasuke's cheek as he shook his head. "Yeah, she'd fall for that, but I'm not the same as her."

"Say that after you get a bell, Sasuke-kun," Kakashi replied with a condescending chuckle.

Sasuke turned to face the jounin, his body relaxed, his eyes focused, and his arms hanging loosely at his sides. Kakashi casually pushed off of the tree and meandered towards the boy, still reading the book.

"The strength of the most elite clan in the village, the Uchiha clan," he remarked, not bothering to look up from his book as he spoke. "I suppose this_could_ be interesting… if you live up to all the hype that is."

Sasuke stared at Kakashi for just a second longer and then attacked, his hands dipping into both the kunai holster on his right thigh and the one on his hip pouch. In the blink of an eye he'd sent three kunai spinning towards the lanky jounin.

Kakashi's _Icha Icha Paradise_ slipped back into his pouch as he easily jumped out of the way. "Such an obvious attack is pointless," he chided with a hint of disappointment.

Sasuke's smirk became more confident as one of the kunai vanished into a large bush, slicing through a rope that was holding back a branch. The branch sprang forward, launching its payload right at Kakashi.

Kakashi's eyes widened in surprise at the trap as he once again leaped into the air to avoid it, barely managing to dodge the numerous knives that thudded into the trunk of a tree behind him. As he landed, he looked over his shoulder to see Sasuke already spinning towards him. This time there would be no dodging and Kakashi was forced to bring up his arm to block the kick aimed at his head. Kakashi brought up his free hand to grab the boy's leg and toss him, but Sasuke was already twisting in the air, his fist preparing to come down on the jounin's head.

Kakashi blocking arm shot up and caught Sasuke's fist, only to have the Uchiha continue twisting and bring his other leg up for a kick.

Thinking quickly, Kakashi raised Sasuke up by his trapped hand and foot, using his forearms to block the kick. The move brought Sasuke's face just a few centimeters from his own and allowed him to see the boy's triumphant smile as the only free limb between the two of them, Sasuke's left hand, shot towards the bells dangling from Kakashi's belt.

_'This kid is just a genin?'_ Kakashi marveled as Sasuke's full trap was finally revealed. To have thought so far ahead would be impressive in a chuunin, in a genin fresh out of the Academy it was incredible. Plus Sasuke's taijutsu was not that of a genin at all.

Even still, he wasn't good enough yet. Kakashi pushed his arms forward and shifted his hips back, moving the young ninja away from him. Sasuke's fingertip grazed one of the bells, causing it to ring softly, but he wasn't close enough to get a hold of it.

With the danger averted, Kakashi tossed Sasuke away from him.

"I'm impressed" the jounin commented offhandedly. "I didn't even have time to read _my book_. I'll acknowledge that you are different from Sakura and you got much closer than Naruto." Even as he offered the compliment, there was something in his voice that said he wasn't really any more impressed with Sasuke than he was with Naruto or Sakura, and Sasuke didn't miss it.

With a snarl, his fingers flew through several seals, ending on Tiger as he took a deep breath and said, "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu!"

Kakashi gasped. There was no way a genin should have enough chakra to use that jutsu. The enormous fireball that erupted from Sasuke's mouth a second later, however, proved that at least one genin was fully capable of using it. As the flames died down, all that was left of the spot Kakashi had been standing was a smoking crater lined with hardened, black stone and burnt grass.

_'He's gone!'_ Sasuke realized as he began looking around frantically for his adversary. _'Where is he? To the side? No, above?'_

"Below you," Kakashi's voice answered his silent question as the ground beneath Sasuke shifted and a hand shot out of it.

"Doton: Shinjuu Zanshu no Jutsu!"

Sasuke managed one small cry of alarm before he was sucked into the ground up to his neck.

"Ninja fighting, Lesson number three: Ninjutsu," Kakashi said with a smile as he knelt next to the trapped genin. "Well, you're already… er,_heads__…_ above the others in this area." He gave the boy's head a condescending little pat, mussed his dark hair, and then wandered off, fetching his book from his pouch as he walked away. "You know, he added over his should just before he vanished from sight, "they say an exposed nail should be hammered in. I'd be careful if I were you."

"Damn you…" Sasuke grumbled, struggling to pull himself free.

ooo

Naruto fell into two bushes, tripped over an exposed tree root, and – while attempting to lean against a tree after one of those incidents – miss judged the length of his arm and slammed the side of his head into the tree before he finally found Sakura. He was more beat up after a short jog through the forest than he was after his beatings from both Kakashi and Sakura.

He'd wanted to get to her quickly and was still trying to remember either what he had done to get himself tied to the tree the first time he'd lived through this day or come up with something that he could do that would end with the same results and had not been paying attention to his movements. Once again his mind proved that on the subconscious level, it couldn't remember that he was a short twelve year old boy and not the tall man he'd eventually become.

As he picked himself up from the ground for the fifth time and wiped his scratched hands against his pants to clear the blood, he found himself wishing that Sakura was her future self, if for no other reason than the fact that she could heal the scrapes and bruises that now covered his body quicker than even the Kyuubi's rejuvenating powers would. Sadly, she was not that person yet, but one day she would be… hopefully.

For the time being, however, she was unconscious and seemed to be foaming at the mouth, her body twitching every couple of seconds. Naruto was pretty certain he hadn't seen this the first time around as Sakura was decidedly _un_attractive at the moment and she'd just about always been the ideal by which he judged all other women. If he'd seen this side of her then, he might have rethought his measuring stick.

"Sakura-chan," he whispered, giving her a little shake. "Sakura-chan, are you alright?"

Sakura mumbled something and then her eyes snapped open and she sat up, driving her forehead into Naruto's nose.

"Ow!" she exclaimed. "Damn it, Naruto! What the hell were you doi... Sasuke-kun!" She began to look around frantically. "Sasuke-kun, don't die and leave me behind!! Where are you??"

"Wha ah yo tal'ing a'ou'?" Naruko asked while massaging her nose. Sakura's oversized forehead packed quite the punch.

Sakura grabbed him by the shoulders and – apparently forgetting that it was his nose she injured and not his ears – yelled, "Have you seen Sasuke-kun? He was right over there… he was… he was…" a shudder ran through her body at the memory and she turned and once again called out, "Sasuke-kun!"

Naruto looked from her wild eyes to the spot she'd pointed to and then back to her face once again. He wasn't sure what she was going on about, but Kakashi was most likely involved. "Sakura-chan, Sasuke will be fine where ever he is. Kakashi… er, sensei is just testing us, he won't hurt us."

"No!" Sakura yelled, working herself into hysterics. "He was…oh god… Sasuke-kun is going to die unless we…"

This time it was Naruto's turn to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. "He's fine, Sakura-chan, believe me." She didn't bother to answer as she continued to turn her head and look around frantically. "Uh, Sakura-chan…" Naruto started, realizing that with them alone he could apologize for his earlier words without making too much of a big deal about it, "…about what I said yesterday… and this morning… well, I'm—"

Sakura wasn't listening. Instead she pushed him roughly aside – sending him tumbling headlong into a thorny bush – and then ran off into the woods as she called out for Sasuke again.

Naruto gingerly pulled himself from the bush and started to go after her, but in his haste he forgot to be conscious of his changed height and once again found himself face first on the ground.

"This sucks," he grumbled as he sat up and ran his fingers through his too short hair.

ooo

It only took Sakura a moment of running headlong through the forest to find Sasuke, still stuck up to his neck in the ground. The two stared at each other for a moment, and then Sakura let out an ear piercing scream as she cried, "His severed head!"

All Sasuke could do was roll his eyes as she collapsed to the ground in a dead faint, and then went back to wiggling free of his dirt prison.

Two or three minutes later he'd created enough space to pull out one of his arms and after that it was only another minute before his whole body was once again above ground, dirty and covered in scratches, but otherwise just fine.

As he brushed the dirt from his clothes he eyed Sakura's prone form. With a sigh, he decided he couldn't just leave her laying there and walked over and gave her a small nudge. "Hey, wake up."

Sakura's green eyes fluttered open a second later. "Sasuke-kun?" she asked in a dazed voice as her eyes slowly focused on him. "Sasuke-kun!!"

In an instant she was up and her arms were tightly wrapped around his neck as her face buried itself in his chest. "You're alright!" she cried as her body shook with emotion.

Sasuke's shock was enough to hold him in place for a moment before he began quickly trying to push her away. "What are you doing?!? Stop it! Don't hug me!"

It took some time, but eventually she released him and stepped back, clearly embarrassed by her outburst and the spontaneous hug. "Sorry," she whispered as she blushed and looked down at the ground, her fingers nervously pulling at a small twig that had become tangled in her hair during one of her fainting sessions.

"Whatever," Sasuke sighed dismissively. He glanced up at the sky and scowled at the sun hanging almost directly above them. "It's almost noon," he noted as he started to walk away, "I'm going."

"You're still going to try to get the bell?" Sakura asked in bewilderment.

"I already touched it. Next time I'll get it."

Sakura's already immense awe at the Uchiha's abilities went up a couple of notches. "Wow, you're incredible, Sasuke-kun!" And then somewhere in her mind a voice reminded her that if she didn't get one of those bells – and she was sure there was no way she would – and Sasuke did, she would be sent back to the Academy while he would become a full-fledged ninja. "You know," she said in an off hand voice, "there isn't all that much time left. We, uh, don't really have to push ourselves too hard… I mean, there's always… you know… next time, right?"

Sasuke's eyes narrowed and his gaze filled with loathing before he turned and walked away from her. For the second time in as many days, Sakura wished the ground would open up and swallow her. It seemed that every conversation she'd ever had with him, which admittedly was only those she'd had with him yesterday and today, ended with him finding her annoying.

After taking a few steps, Sasuke stopped and looked down. "There's a man I have to kill," he said quietly.

Sakura wasn't sure what he meant, but her heart leapt just from the fact that he was still willing to talk to her. "Do you… mean Kakashi-sensei?"

If Sasuke heard her, he didn't show it. "That time… he left me crying…"

"Crying?"

"My…" his voice trailed off again and this time he didn't seem to want to say anything more.

"What do you mean, Sasuke-kun?" Sakura asked cautiously. For that one brief moment, even though she couldn't see his face, Sasuke actually looked vulnerable. It was something she'd never seen before and she couldn't help but wonder if anyone else had either.

"I'm an Avenger," he replied, turning back towards her, his eyes suddenly burning with emotions that had risen to the surface. "I have to become stronger than that man! I can't just stay around here and—"

Whatever he was going to say was cut off by the sound of a bell ringing in the distance.

"Damn!" the dark haired boy swore as he looked towards the sound. "I wasted too much time with you…" Without another word, he turned and walked towards the spot where the three posts and Kakashi were waiting for them, leaving Sakura to stare after him in confusion.

ooo

Ten minutes later, Naruto and Sasuke were sitting on the ground between the posts, Sakura was tied to the middle post, and Kakashi was standing in front of them. Just behind him there was a circle of bricks that had been set in the ground surrounding the stone monument they had seen earlier.

"You guys look hungry," the jounin remarked casually, his one eye lazily shifting from face to face.

"Why'd Sakura-chan get tied up?" Naruto asked, leaving his next question, _"Why her and not me?"_ to himself.

"Well, I suppose technically all of you should be tied to these posts, since none of you managed to get a bell, but two of you at least tried and weren't completely inept. Plus, I'm feeling generous today, so I'm rewarding your efforts. Sakura-chan, on the other hand, barely even saw me, so she doesn't get a reward."

Sakura's face burned with humiliation and she wanted to cry. It was bad enough that Sasuke had to see her fail like this, but to be outdone by Naruto too? It was almost too much shame for her to handle. Her nightmares from the previous night suddenly looked less like bad dreams and more like premonitions.

"Now then, about the training," Kakashi continued, oblivious to her discomfort, "there's clearly no need for you three to go back to the Academy." The jounin eyed each of his potential pupils, watching them go through the usual emotions. Sasuke scowled, but seemed to have expected as much… no doubt aware of just how good he was. Sakura was surprised and delighted, which wasn't surprising since she didn't do anything. And Naruto… Naruto just sat there, looking neither surprised nor pleased. It was almost as if he was waiting for the hammer to fall.

Kakashi shook this idea away just as quickly as he had the thought that the blond had known about the reason for the "no eating" suggestion, Naruto would have no way of knowing how this test was supposed to go nor could he have possibly guessed what was coming next. He was probably just tired and hungry and more interested in food – or the cute girl tied to the post next to him – than in what his instructor was telling him. That was, after all, the way the Academy instructors had described him.

"So then," Sakura said excitedly, "we all… I mean, all three of us…"

Kakashi smiled through his mask. "Yup. All three of you… should quit as ninja!"

Sasuke's eyes narrowed dangerously and Kakashi wouldn't have been surprised if the boy jumped to his feet and attacked him. Sakura's mouth hung open and her eyes were wide with alarm. And Naruto… Naruto sighed and picked at some grass, looking very confused, but not terribly alarmed.

For a long moment, no one said anything and Kakashi wondered if they were going to be so pathetically complacent as to give up their dreams just because their "leader" told them too.

Finally, Naruto – who still was showing the least reaction to the news – looked up from the grass his fingers were still tugging at and asked, "Why?"

Sakura seemed to awaken at Naruto's words and added, "Yeah. We couldn't get the bells, but why should we have to quit because of that?"

Kakashi looked down his nose at them and sneered, though it was probably hard to read his expression completely through his mask. "Because all of you are just punks who don't deserve to be ninja," he replied matter-of-factly.

Sasuke's jaw flexed and the killer intent rolling off of him nearly doubled. Kakashi let his eye fall on the dark haired boy and raised a questioning eyebrow. That was all that was needed for Sasuke to spring to his feet and charge at the jounin.

"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura cried out, struggling against the rope that bound her.

The words were scarcely out of her mouth before it was all over. Sasuke's arm was pinned behind his back by an iron-tight grip and his face was driven into the ground by Kakashi's foot while the jounin calmly sat on him.

"This is why you're a punk," Kakashi informed the futilely struggling boy, shifting his foot so that it pressed a little more painfully down on his captive.

"Don't step on Sasuke-kun!" Sakura yelled as she struggled against her bindings.

Kakashi glanced up at her and then turned towards Naruto who seemed to finally be paying attention; action was obviously more interesting to him than words. It was too bad he seemed so disinterested in what Kakashi was telling them, unless he and his teammates looked beneath what was being _said_ chances were they would fail. Naruto seemed to have good instincts, given the apparently lack of training he'd received (if his kunai aim was anything to go on), but if all he was going to put those good instincts towards was following orders blindly, he was simply a waste of decent potential.

"Are you guys underestimating what it means to be a ninja?" Kakashi asked at last. "Why do you think you were divided into teams? Why do you think we're doing this training? Huh?"

"What do you mean?" Sakura asked in confusion while Naruto stared at her.

Kakashi shook his head resignedly. "You three still don't understand the answer to this test."

"So, are you going to tell us the answer?" Sakura asked hopefully.

"Geez," Kakashi groaned, "are you all really this dumb?"

"Just tell us the answer already… sensei," Naruto sighed, sounding equally annoyed.

"It's… Teamwork." Sakura and Sasuke's heads snapped up at the announcement, while Naruto looked slightly nervous, but not as surprised as he should have been.

Once again, Kakashi considered the possibility that the blond might have already guessed the answer, but then dismissed it. He realized that he'd been doing that far too often for comfort lately, but, again,if Naruto _had_ figured it out, he would have done something about it. Besides, acting as a team wasn't really enough, nor was it the complete answer to the test. "The three of you working together might have been able to get the bells from me, but on your own you stood no chance," he explained.

"What do you mean by teamwork?" Sakura yelled in frustration. "There were only two bells! Even if we worked together and managed to get both of them, one of us would still have failed! What kind of teamwork is that? This just makes us fight each other!"

Kakashi waited for a moment to see if she would work her way to the next logical step, but she seemed to run out of steam so he said, "Of course this test was designed to make you fight amongst yourselves." At her confused expression and Naruto's apparent lack of understanding and/or caring, Kakashi added, "The whole purpose was to see if you could forget about your own interests and work together under controlled circumstances. We wouldn't want to find out you were only going to look out for yourselves while on a real mission, after all."

He looked off to the side and rubbed his one visible eye with his thumb. "Sakura, instead of Naruto, who was right next to you, you were only thinking of Sasuke, who was far away." He turned towards the blond who had gone back to pulling at the grass, "Naruto, you spent half your time running around by yourself or looking for Sakura." He pushed his foot a little harder down on Sasuke's head to make sure he had his full attention and said, "Sasuke, you just assumed the others would get in your way and tried to do everything yourself.

"Ninja duties are preformed by the _team_. Of course, superior individual abilities are important, but what's even more important is 'teamwork.' If you're acting on your own out there, your teammates are at risk and you could even get yourself killed. For instance…" He reached into his hip pouch, pulled out a kunai, and wrenched Sasuke's arm to the side as he leaned over him threateningly, "Sakura! Decide right now. Do I kill Sasuke or Naruto?"

Sakura gaped at him while Naruto watched her curiously. His lack of reaction was beginning to bother Kakashi, the boy simply wasn't who all of the reports – as well as Hokage-sama's personal opinion – had led him to believe that he was. Naruto was quiet to the point of passivity; he just watched everything happening around him, sometimes with an almost detached disinterest. It was unnerving.

"I can't decide something like that!" Sakura yelled in distress bringing Kakashi back to the here and now.

Kakashi pulled the kunai away from Sasuke's neck and stood up, "The day might come, when one or even all of you are taken hostage, and you're forced to make that sort of a decision. When you're on a mission, you're lives will always be on the line." He walked a few paces to the east and looked down at the large cut stone with several marble markers that looked like tombstones around it. The simple, elegant memorial seemed out of place in the wooded area of a training ground, but that was the reason it was there. So that those you used the training ground would never forget why they trained and who had come before them.

"Look at this marker," he said in a quiet voice, his eye automatically going to a specific name carved upon it. "All of the names carved into this stone belong to heroes of this village," his friend's carefree smiling face flashed before his mind followed quickly by the blood covered version that was the last memory he had of Obito, "but the ones listed here aren't just any heroes… they're the names of those who have died in the line of duty."

Naruto stared intently at the stone. It wasn't half as filled as the last time he'd visited it, when he carved Kohonamaru's name into it himself. The blank spaces on that stone represented the hope he had for the future. If he had it his way, few, if any, names would be added to it during this lifetime… His precious people would be protected above all else, no matter what. He wasn't going to see another name get carved on that blasted stone ever again.

"This is a memorial," Kakashi explained. "The names of my best friends are carved on it, along with the names of people's mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters… whole families have been carved into this stone and more will be added to it in the future."

He bowed his head for a moment and then looked over his shoulder at his subdued students. "I'm going to give you one last chance," he said coldly, as if their failure to work together was an insult to the names on the stone, and, truthfully, he thought it was. "This one will be far more difficult than our little game with the bells. If you're prepared to continue, you may eat one of the bento boxes." His eye bore into them as he added, "But no sharing with Sakura-chan. Of the three of you, she did the least. Naruto and Sasuke at least came close to getting a bell, but all she did was pass out. If either of you feed her, you fail the test right there and I will make sure that any other jounin you ever manage to convince to give you a shot at being on a team will know that you don't follow direct orders. On this training field, my word is law. Do you understand?"

Sasuke gave a small nod, but Naruto continued staring at the stone, transfixed. Kakashi waited for a few more seconds and then vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving the three by themselves.

"It's okay guys, I don't need lunch anyway," Sakura lied as her stomach grumbled in protest.

Naruto reached out, took one of the boxes and slipped his chopsticks out of their sleeve, but did not start eating. His eyes darted from the food to Sasuke and then up to Sakura. Sasuke thoughtfully placed a piece of takoyaki in his mouth and glanced up at Sakura who was doing her best to keep quiet and not call any attention to herself, despite the fact that both boys kept looking at her.

After another growl from her stomach, Naruto looked pleadingly at Sasuke. He still hadn't touched his food, and wanted desperately to share it with his future friend, but Sasuke was the one who had initiated the sharing the first time – that much, at least, he remembered – and Naruto didn't want to change anything that had worked out properly the first time around.

Again Sasuke glanced up at her, aside from the takoyaki he still hadn't touched much of his lunch either, but once again he looked away.

Naruto watched him for a moment and then shook his head in frustration. Why was Sasuke acting like it would be harder to offer food to Sakura when he'd done it fairly easily for him the first time? She was a girl, for crying out loud, it was natural to want to help them!

He waited just a little longer and then gave it up for lost. He reached into the kunai holster on his right thigh, pulled one of the knives out, and cut the rope binding her, careful to remember that his arms were shorter than his brain wanted to think they were.

"What are you doing, Naruto?!?" she demanded as her bindings fell away. "You're going to get us in trouble!"

"Do you want to split my lunch with me or not?" Naruto asked with a roll of his eyes. "Kak… I mean, s_ensei_ is probably a long ways off and you won't be much help to us if you're so hungry you can't stand… right, Sasuke?"

Sasuke nodded quickly and passed his lunch to her as well. "There are some umeboshi in here, you can have them if you like."

Sakura's eyes filled with tears as she looked at the Uchiha. "Umeboshi are my favorite," she whispered. He merely shrugged, picked out another takoyaki, and ate it without looking at her or Naruto.

The three ate together for several minutes, enjoying the food after having gone so long without. There wasn't much in the way of conversation, but the atmosphere was relaxed. Naruto continued to stare at the monument thoughtfully, Sakura continued to stare at Sasuke happily, and Sasuke did his best to look anywhere but at his teammates.

Suddenly, the ground in front of them erupted with an enormous explosion.

Sasuke immediately leaped to his feet, his hand reaching for a kunai as he positioned himself slightly in front of Sakura. Naruto also was on his feet, but had reacted much slower and was less prepared to defend himself than Sasuke.

"YOU…" Kakashi's voice boomed out of the clearing smoke as his head appeared in front of them, his face a mask of rage. Then suddenly he smiled and his face relaxed. "…pass," he finished in a happy, nearly ecstatic, voice as he winked at them.

"We pass?" Sakura asked in astonishment, her heart still beating hard in her chest from the jounin's sudden – and rather frightening – appearance. "But why?"

"Not only do you pass," Kakashi replied, practically beaming, "but you're the first to pass. Everyone else just ran around doing every stupid I said, no matter how dumb the orders. They were all morons." He glanced down at the mostly eaten meals and sighed contentedly. "A ninja has to be able to see underneath the underneath. Those who don't follow the rules or don't obey orders in the ninja world are called trash, but those who do not care for or support their comrades, even if that means violating orders once in a while, are_lower_ than trash."

Kakashi watched the information sink into all of his students… his first students… and smiled, even Naruto was reacting the way he expected him to, whooping it up with Sakura, while Sasuke looked on with a reserved grin on his face.

"That officially ends the training," Kakashi said after watching their celebration for a moment. "All of you pass. So starting tomorrow we'll begin our duties as Team Seven. Come on, we'll head back to the village and I'll show you where we're supposed to meet in the mornings."

The four headed towards the Hokage Tower, three very happy that they had managed to pass their final exam and one slightly disappointed that one of his students had cut the rope so he couldn't leave anyone tied to the post for a while as his best friend had once been, long ago.

Even with that minor disappointment, it was a happy day for Hatake Kakashi. He had a genin team to lead, three students who had passed the test where the all previous teams he'd tested had failed miserably. On top of that, one already showed excellent potential, another wasn't as bad as advertised and was proving to at least be interesting, and the third was incredibly intelligent according to the reports her Academy teachers had written.

Yes, this was a team he could expect big things out of.

o

o

A/N: That should, to an extent, conclude our following of the manga/anime for the moment. Sorry if it got boring reading about stuff you already knew, but Naruto could hardly make big enough changes to effect things _this_ early in the story. Obviously when we get to the Wave Country arc (in a couple of chapters) I'll have to follow canon a little, but I think I have a slightly interesting wrinkle that should keep it from being too boring. Also, whenever I use a jutsu in the story it will be in Japanese. I try to describe it enough that you don't really have to know what the words exactly mean, but I'll also have it translated at the bottom for those who are curious. Same goes for any Japanese foods or animals that I happen to mention. Thanks for reading and don't forget to let me know what you thought.

Takoyaki is a Japanese dumpling with octopus bits inside. It's normally a snack or a side dish.

Umeboshi is a type of Japanese pickle and also happens to be one of Sakura's favorite foods according to wikipedia.

"Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu" Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique

"Doton: Shinjuu Zanshu no Jutsu" Earth Release: Inner Decapitation Technique

Hachidaime Hokage Eighth Hokage… originally I had it as Eitodaime, but a couple of people said they thought this was wrong… hopefully it's right now. If not, well, I tried.


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

o

There were not many dairy farms in Konoha, so when one of the farmers requested aid with his chores because of injury or sickness or even because he just felt like it, he generally got a decently skilled and experienced team of genin at a discounted price. If the village needed to ship milk in from other towns, dairy prices would skyrocket and the villagers who enjoyed it would complain long and hard to a Hokage who – much as he loved his people – had better things to do with his time.

Naruto had been forced to deal with a milk shortage… along with a clean water shortage, a food shortage, and just about every other shortage that one could think up… so he knew the importance of taking care of such a resource. What he couldn't figure out was why _his_ team had to be the ones sent to deal with the problem. The work was – to put it nicely – boring beyond all reason. It was the sort of work that a… well, that a genin would do. And while he was, _technically_, a genin, he was also a Hokage – stupid village councilors who had long outlived their usefulness aside.

The part of him that insisted on wearing orange clothing and had used buckets of paint to make irritating additions to the faces of past Hokages wanted a fun mission. It wanted a mission that would be at least a little dangerous and therefore exciting, where he could show everyone just how awesome he was. Fighting off bandits, perhaps, or tackling a camp of missing-nin, maybe rescuing the kidnapped daughter of a daimyo. The sorts of missions that he used to long for back when he was innocent and stupid, back before he started assigning those missions to other people and then had to attend the funeral for the ones who came home in body bags.

He wasn't that innocent anymore, unfortunately, which was why another part of him understood why genin teams – especially ones as inexperienced as the one he was currently on – were not assigned missions like that in times of peace. It was this part of him that recognized how nice this sort of mission was to someone in his unique predicament.

Watching Sakura being tied to the post and then having to stare at Sasuke while the Uchiha _refused_ to get over himself and help her had been frighteningly alarming. He was from the future and knew at least roughly how events were supposed to play out, but something had changed and some things hadn't followed their proper course. It wasn't a huge big deal because he'd been able to nudge events back on course, but if he hadn't there was a very good chance that his team would have failed Kakashi's test and been sent back to the Academy.

That was the catalyst that had led him to his current plan: change as little as possible.

It wasn't that Naruto wasn't going to change _anything_. He just didn't want to run into a situation where something he changed caused other things – especially _good_ or _important_ things – to spiral out of control and go badly for the people he cared about. For two straight nights he'd had nightmares of showing Sasuke up and having his future friend despise him for it enough to go running into Orochimaru's waiting arms. He wasn't sure how realistic such thoughts were, but they were plausible enough to scare him into inactivity. At least for the time being.

Besides being scared of changing what should remain the same, there was the problem of not being able to properly control his body on a consistent basis. As worried as he might have been about bruising Sasuke's pride at the wrong time, the facts were that he couldn't have done so even if he'd tried. Over the course of the week since he'd woken up in the past, he had been taking regular tumbles into the dirt whenever he stopped reminding himself about his shortened stature, weakened muscles, and diminished body weight. It _was_ getting better, but now he was being far more cautious when he moved to make sure that he didn't look too stupid in front of his friends.

It was so bad during their first mission that Kakashi had actually offered to drop him off at the hospital to have his eyes checked after their first day together as a team. Naruto had been able to talk his way out of it, claiming that he was only tired and would be better after some sleep, but it had been a close call. Thankfully, though he wasn't much better the following day, the issue wasn't brought up again.

His lack of coordination meant that even if he was sure he should change something and actually had the opportunity to do so, he was impotent to take advantage of it for the most part. Actually, with his clumsiness, it seemed that besides getting a few missions that he didn't remember from before – though he might have simply repressed the memories of such extreme boredom – everything was progressing more or less how it had before. He was still the chronic screw up on the team and Sasuke was still the one who always had to bail them out.

In his mind, the similarities between the original timeline and this one were both good and bad… good that he hadn't messed up things that had led to he and his teammates becoming friends, bad that the things that had led Sasuke to leave for Orochimaru were still there as well. In today's case, however, even though he knew and understood the reason for it, the mission was just too boring for words.

"Sensei," Naruto whined pitifully as he watched the elderly farmer show them how to milk the cow, "please, this is soooo boring. Can't we have another mission? Isn't there some cat that's stuck in a tree or a runaway dog we can chase all over the village again?" It was easy to slip into the character of the person he'd been as a child, he felt the same impatience now as he had before and this time around he actually _was_ as amazing as he'd once thought himself… or would be once he had complete control over his new body.

Kakashi smiled down at Naruto through his mask and ruffled the blond's hair affectionately, or at least that was how it looked. Actually Naruto found it to be not only a bit demeaning but also quite painful. "This is a very important mission, Naruto," the jounin explained. "If the cows aren't milked, what do you suppose would happen?"

Naruto knew the answer, of course. He also knew that he would have merely scratched his head and looked stupid the first time around. While he didn't want Kakashi thinking him too dense, he didn't want to seem like he was suddenly someone who completely understood what would happen to an unmilked cow or the possible psychological and economical impact it could have on the village as a whole. He couldn't afford to appear to be too different from who he was supposed, not yet at least. In the end, he compromised by looking thoughtful and not answering until Sakura explained it as she always did.

"Dummy," the pink haired kunoichi sighed with a shake of her head, "if the cows aren't milked, their udders will stop producing milk and there would be a dairy shortage in the village."

"Exactly," Kakashi said.

"I _know_ that," Naruto shot back, receiving two disbelieving looks – which he supposed was a good thing even if he didn't like them. "I meant why are _we_ doing this? There's got to be another team that could handle this mission while we did something more interesting."

Kakashi shrugged, "We just take the missions we're given. There weren't any other D Rank missions left by the time we got there, so this was our only choice."

"Maybe if you showed up on time we wouldn't have gotten stuck with a lousy mission," Naruto grumbled, crossing his arms and scowling at the cow as though it had somehow had a hand in saddling him with another boring and somewhat smelly mission.

As the explanation and demonstration came to an end, having been heard and observed only by Sasuke and – to a slightly lesser extent – Sakura, the elderly man led them out into the small pasture and pointed out the different areas of the farm and explained what would need to be done to each. A few minor repairs and a new coat of paint for the fence surrounding the bull, feeding the four pigs occupying the sty located next to the barn, bringing some hay in for the cows to eat, and a couple of other random, boring chores that Naruto had once assumed he was long past having to deal with. Before they could get to those little 'gems,' however, his team would have to milk the fifty cows located in the barn.

Each genin was handed a bucket, a stool, and told to "have fun" by Kakashi and were sent into the barn to complete the cow milking portion of their mission. Since this mission was about completing the tasks given to them and not necessarily a job that required much teamwork, Kakashi told them he would not be working with them, but would observe their efforts from afar. Sakura grumbled that he only wanted to go read his dirty book, but was ignored by the lanky jounin.

Naruto didn't trip at all as they walked back to the barn, a vast improvement over what he'd been capable of just a few days before. Finally, it seemed, his mind and body had adjusted to each other, or at least were getting close. He wasn't totally there yet – since he still had to watch himself to make sure he didn't mess up – but complete assimilation into his old body couldn't be that far off… he hoped.

As he entered the barn, his accomplishment giving him more confidence than he'd felt in several days, he promised himself that as soon as he could move his body properly on a consistent basis, he would begin to change things – the _right_ things. Until then he would have to keep working on the one goal that he had been actively trying to change: getting Sakura and Sasuke to be his friends earlier than they had been originally… unfortunately they didn't seem to be in as much of a hurry as he was.

As far as Naruto could remember, he and Sasuke had generally hated each other (or at least pretended to) until the Wave Country mission when they had competed against each other in their training. Sasuke had been his rival before then, of course, but to Sasuke he was nothing more than a pest who had no hopes of competing with the _great_ Uchiha. Sasuke seemed to feel about the same for him this time around as well. Perhaps it was because Naruto hadn't proven his potential as he would during their tree climbing training on that mission, or maybe theirs was a camaraderie that needed to be forged in battle.

Whatever the case, Sasuke didn't seem too interested in Naruto yet and Naruto found that extremely irksome.

He and Sakura had also become friends… sort of friends at least… around the same time or maybe even a little later when they were taking the Chuunin Exam, and – just as with Sasuke – those circumstances seemed to be needed again. For the time being, she routinely called him an idiot, told him to shut up, or simply seemed exasperated at his presence on her team. If anything, she was even colder to him this time around than she had been before. It was difficult to say whether she was still mad because of his "jumping Sasuke's bones" comment to her on that first day or was just irritated that he was paying less attention to her and spending more time trying to get Sasuke to be his friend and less time trying to ask her out. Without meaning to, he had definitely not been pursuing her the way he had the first time around, so it was possible that she was missing the attention he'd once paid her… even if it had always seemed to annoy her.

The idea that Sakura might actually be missing something that irritated her was a perplexing one, but then she'd often told him in the future that he just didn't understand girls and he'd generally been forced to agree with her. This, apparently, was just one more thing he didn't understand about the fairer sex.

Naruto sat down wearily on his stool and eyed the first cow as it slowly chewed its cud, looking almost as bored as he felt. The cow didn't make any attempt to get away or attack him, but for a minute it shuffled and stomped its feet agitatedly. Naruto had had plenty of experience with this reaction, a lot of animals acted like that when he first approached them, but they eventually calmed down – or attacked him – and the cow was no different. As its agitation abated and it gradually stopped squirming, Naruto looked down at its swollen udder and bit his lip. How had that old man done this? Slowly he reached out and touched one of the four long nipples, watching his hand the whole way to make sure he didn't accidentally punch the poor animal or miss his target in some other unpleasant way.

As his hand closed around the soft, squishy skin, once again proving to himself just how far he'd come in the past week, the cow turned its head and looked at him, methodically chewing its cud, and then returned to ignoring him. Apparently once it was used to him, it no longer cared what he did back there.

So far, so good.

Naruto stole a peek at Sakura to see if he could discern how she was doing it. It was hard to see from his angle, but she seemed to be pulling down to make milk squirt into the bucket.

He gently squeezed the very bottom of the nipple and slowly pulled down. Nothing happened. He tried squeezing just a little harder, but again was left with nothing. He gave the udder a long intense stare, pondering how he could unlock the mystery of operating it, and then tried giving the nipple a hard, sharp pull.

The cow's reaction was instantaneous. It mooed loudly, turned so that its butt was in Naruto's face, and then gave the blond a quick kick to the chest, sending him crashing through the wall of the barn and tumbling into the dirt outside. The commotion got Sakura and Sasuke's attention just in time for them to see the enraged cow charging after Naruto who was trying to scramble to his feet and run while struggling to get oxygen back in his lungs.

"What did you do to her?" Sakura demanded loudly.

Naruto didn't bother responding as he turned and fled from the revenge-minded cow, only to trip after about a half dozen steps and start to fall. The cow didn't even let him hit the ground before applying its head to his backend, sending him somersaulting through the grass and dirt and finally smashing through the fence surrounding the bull's pin.

The bull watched Naruto with visible trepidation, unnerved by the intruder's cursing, strange movements, and sudden, loud entrance. Several times he stomped his feet and lowered his head to show the boy his horns as a warning.

Naruto hardly noticed the bull.

"Stupid cow…" he grumbled as he stood up and began dusting the dirt – and probably animal droppings – from his pants and jacket. Crashing through the fence had torn his pants slightly, he'd have to sew them up again that evening, and his back and chest ached from the jarring blows he'd received from his attacker. With a grown he pulled off his jacket and looked at it critically to see if it had been ripped as well. Fortunately – because he found jackets harder to sew than pants – it seemed to have survived with only superficial damage. "I hate these stupid missions," he sighed one last time as he gave the jacket a couple of shakes to clean off the dust and grass that clung to it.

"Naruto! Look out!" Sakura screamed as Naruto felt the vibrations of the ground from the charging bull.

"Ah, shit," Naruto sighed as he dove out of the way.

The bull ran a few paces farther and then turned back towards the young ninja who had rolled smoothly to his feet.

"Nice bull," Naruto said soothingly, or so he hoped, "no need to get all riled up."

The bull didn't seem to appreciate the tone of his voice, as he immediately lowered his head and prepared to charge once more.

Naruto managed a quick glance over his shoulder and frowned, he was practically in the middle of the bull's pin. With his short legs and reduced speed, it would be tough to escape over the fence before the bull reached him and he wasn't totally sure he had the coordination to continue to dodge. As the bull bore down on him, he didn't have time to think, his body simply reacted.

His hands came together, fingers intertwining and then moving through a quick series of four seals. Ox, rat, monkey, and dog, each seal forming almost perfectly despite his too small body. The second the seals were completed, he dropped to his knees and slammed his hands into the ground.

Just in front of him, a square sheet of stone, only a couple of centimeters thick, leapt out of the dirt. The stone wasn't nearly as thick as the jutsu's originator – or at least the person Naruto had taken it from – could make it, and wasn't quite as unforgiving, but that hardly seemed to matter in the end.

The stone shield shattered under the impact of the bull's skull, showering Naruto with sharp tiny shards that bit into his skin. The bull took two unsteady backwards steps and then collapsed to the ground.

Had Neji – or at least future Neji – been the one to use the jutsu, the bull probably would have died. Naruto had learned (in other words, _stolen_) the jutsu from the straight-faced Hyuuga while he was helping him practice a new taijutsu style that would not only allow full use of the Byakugan, but also give the user more flexibility in performing ninjutsu, removing the handicap of only being able to attack from close range. Neji had been able to use the jutsu simply by forming the seals – often within the large, loose sleeves of his shirt so that his hands were hidden – and then tapping his foot on the ground. The effect was devastating, one moment an attacker would see an opening in the Hyuuga's guard, the next his fist or foot would unexpectedly slam into a meter – or more – thick slab of stone. Naruto had broken his hand twice in the first week of sparring with his friend.

Naruto had always had to place his hands on the ground to make the jutsu work. Whether that was because he didn't have the chakra manipulation abilities of the Hyuuga clan or because he wasn't a natural Earth chakra type – as Neji was – he couldn't say. Fortunately, the bull didn't seem to notice the difference.

It only took a few seconds for Sakura and Sasuke to hurry over to the bull pin. Sasuke stopped at the broken fence and looked from the bull to Naruto, his eyes narrowed. Sakura hurried not to Naruto, but to the bull, checking to see if it was still alive. "You idiot, what if you killed it?!" she yelled, her voice panicked.

"Better him than me," the blond countered as he brushed away a few tiny shards of stone that had managed to pierce his skin.

"We might fail our mission because of this."

Naruto was unmoved. "Better. Him. Than. Me."

Sakura shook her head and continued to check the bull as much as she dared, not wanting him to awaken and renew his aggression.

Sasuke walked forward until he was standing over Naruto. He didn't offer a hand to help the blond up, nor did he seem particularly concerned about his teammate's health – though, in fairness, Naruto was clearly going to live – but there was a strange expression on his face. "What was that jutsu?" he asked in an even tone.

"Yeah, I'm fine, thanks for asking…" Naruto grumbled as he got to his feet.

"I've never seen it before, where did you learn it?" Sasuke asked again, giving no sign that he'd even heard Naruto's sarcasm. "That wasn't a jutsu taught in the Academy."

Naruto refused to meet Sasuke's eyes, instead focusing on the bull that Sakura was now ignoring as she eavesdropped on the boys' conversation. "A friend taught me a while ago," he replied truthfully.

"Who?"

Naruto frowned and then his eyes widened slightly. "You want to know how to do it," he realized in near disbelief as a smirk formed on his lips.

Sasuke scowled, but didn't reply.

"You do, don't you?" Naruto laughed almost breaking into a little happy dance, but restraining himself. "You want _me_ to teach _you_!"

It was more than he could have hoped for! Sasuke had never shown an interest in working with anyone on anything outside of their missions. They were like brothers, but it was their missions that brought them together and kept them together. Once Sasuke felt that the missions were no longer of use to him, it was easy for him to push Naruto aside as well. If they trained together, if Naruto could show Sasuke that his friends could give him as much or more power than Orochimaru, then maybe the Uchiha wouldn't leave the village when the Snake Sannin's offer was made. And if Sasuke willingly came to Naruto for help… well, he couldn't get made when Naruto did what he asked for, could he?

"Forget it," Sasuke growled, his pale cheeks coloring with embarrassment.

"No!" Naruto practically yelled. In his joy at the potential fix for all his problems that had just been dropped in his lap, he hadn't realized that he was acting like… well, himself, actually, or at least his younger self. "I'll teach you, if you want me to."

"I don't need your charity," Sasuke hissed as he turned and walked away.

Naruto cursed his own stupidity under his breath as he stared at the back of his retreating friend. Sasuke had handed him the perfect chance to start changing things for the better and he'd screwed it up in less than thirty seconds, what was wrong with him?

The chilling thought that perhaps it was impossible to change things struck him but was quickly squashed. Sure, some of the basic details had remained the same from the original timeline, becoming a ninja, being defeated by Kakashi… getting poked in the butt… but it wasn't like _everything_ had turned out the same. Sakura had been tied to the tree, not him, and his first team meeting had been at least a little different from the first time it happened. He was changing things, even if none of it seemed to be significant. He would just have to work harder to make bigger, better changes.

"What did you do?" Sakura's voice awoke him from his thoughts. "What did you say to Sasuke-kun?"

Naruto felt his body sag. It was hard getting used to everyone treating him like they had before, but readjusting to the old Sakura was nearly impossible. She'd been his closest, most dear friend all the way up until her death. They had been so inseparable that rumors had begun to circulate that they were actually lovers, especially after she'd been seen leaving his apartment in the morning still dressed in the clothes she'd had on the day before.

And, as with most rumors, there was a grain of truth behind all of the exaggerations. They did spend many nights together but not as lovers. Actually, the first time Sakura spent the night with him, Naruto had tried to sneak a peek but she had firmly informed him that she was not yet asleep and that he was mere centimeters away from losing the hand that was trying to lift the top of her shirt out of the way as well as the part that distinguished him as male.

Once, and only once, when they were a bit drunk, and perhaps a bit depressed, and at least he was feeling a little horny, a simple good night kiss had become something more and soon clothes were on the floor and they were tangled in his sheets. That night had been amazing – so far as he could tell from the alcohol-blurred memory – but the next morning had been awkward and it quickly became apparent that the lust from the night before had been more alcohol induced than anything else. It was agreed upon (a little reluctantly on his side) that it should never happen again, nor even be brought up. And so they took to simply enjoying the nights spent in each other's arms, drawing strength from their bond of friendship and comforting each other after particularly difficult losses. Aside from that one time, neither of them had really even had the time or the energy for sex after a long day of carrying out missions, leading the village, planning attacks, and dealing with the deaths of friends and family… not that the idea of doing it again hadn't crossed Naruto's mind once in a while – he was a man after all and Jiraiya's student on top of that… plus, Sakura was going to be a pretty hot kunoichi one day…

"I didn't do anything, Sakura-chan," Naruto sighed, still watching his friend's back. "So far I haven't managed to do anything no matter how hard I've tried…"

Sakura muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "no joke" and then hurried after Sasuke, leaving Naruto wondering if he'd ever be able to fix anything or if he was doomed to watch the world crumble even faster the second time around.

The rest of the mission was notable only for the thick cloud of irritation and gloom that seemed to hang over the farm. Sasuke and Sakura finished milking the cows by themselves (much to Sakura's delight, though Sasuke didn't say two words to her the entire time) while Naruto was told to do the other chores assigned to them. It only took a couple of hours for the squad of Naruto clones to finish their jobs, though there was some _unpleasantness _during the pig slopping which resulted in three less clones and some disturbing memories transmitted to Naruto, but eventually even that mess was cleaned up.

When they were finished, Kakashi led them back to the Hokage Tower. Normally, he would have taken them to one of the training grounds and instructed them on some team tactics, shown them how to use different pieces of surveillance equipment properly, had them practice their taijutsu, or – on very rare occasions that technically hadn't happened yet, but would in the not so distant future if Naruto's memories were correct – even taught them a simple jutsu or two. Because of their late start and because he had to explain why a barn wall had to be patched and how a bull received a minor concussion on a cow milking and farm repair mission, he told them that he was giving them what little was left of the afternoon off.

The words had scarcely left Kakashi's mouth before Sasuke had turned and started walking home.

Naruto hurried to catch up with the dark haired boy, wanting to take another shot at breaking through the wall between them. If Sasuke had been willing to sort of come to him wanting to know how he'd done that jutsu, maybe they weren't as far apart as he'd thought they were. "Hey Sasuke, do you want me to show you that jutsu now?" he asked with a cheerful smile.

Sasuke stopped and looked at him with a bored expression. "Not really."

Naruto's heart sunk a little lower. This was how _all_ of their conversations seemed to go. "Well, do you want to just go hang out?"

"No."

Naruto was desperate now and he knew that he only had a few seconds before Sakura would become annoyed with him for trying to cut in on her time with Sasuke – as if they actually ever spent any time together. "Do you want to do anything?"

Sasuke gave a little shake of his head. "I wouldn't mind going to a place where loud-mouthed idiots didn't bother me all the time."

Naruto sighed and let it go. He'd had this basic conversation with Sasuke a dozen times already it seemed and not once had it gone anywhere. For whatever reason, he just couldn't get Sasuke to think of him as more than a weak pest.

"Sasuke-kun, wait!" Sakura called out before her crush could make his hasty exit. He did stop, though the look on his face made it clear that he had considered continuing on as though he hadn't heard her. Sakura elbowed past Naruto and smiled happily at him, despite the expression on his face, clasped her hands in front of her chest as though begging but trying to be cute about it, and said, "Since we have the afternoon off, I was thinking we could… uh, go get something to eat… l-like, um, on a date…" She had started off strong, but as she came closer and closer to asking him out, she began digging her toe into the dirt and her smile became far more nervous.

Sasuke rolled his eyes and gave an annoyed shake of his head. "I've got better things to do."

Sakura visibly deflated as his cold voice swept over her. Her shoulders slumped, her head drooped and her hands fell to her sides. Sasuke didn't give her a chance to come up with something else to say, he quickly turned and walked away, hands still tucked casually in his pockets as though it didn't matter that he'd just crushed a girl's hopes… if only for a little while.

Despite having just been elbowed out of the way by Sakura, Naruto felt old, protective instincts beginning to kick in and it took every ounce of will power to keep himself from running Sasuke down and beating him into the pavement until he apologized. He waited for a full minute before approaching Sakura, reaching out a hand to pat her shoulder, but bringing it back before it made contact.

If she was his Sakura – the older Sakura – he would have known more or less what to say to her or at least would have felt more comfortable trying to cheer her up, but this Sakura was something of a mystery. She was only a child and her emotions were so all over the place that it was hard to figure her out. Would she appreciate him trying to cheer her up? Would it just start a fight? Would she be mad if he _didn't_ try to cheer her up?

"Eh, Sakura-chan?" he started tentatively. "Are you okay?"

Sakura took a deep breath and then turned, her eyes once again filled with life – and annoyance at him. "Of course," she snapped.

"Oh… uh, good," Naruto managed, thrown off guard by the near instantaneous change. "If… uh… you still want to eat… I could take you."

Sakura's eyes narrowed and Naruto knew that he'd said the wrong thing. "I've got better things to do," she replied evenly, leaving him to wonder if she even realized she was quoting what Sasuke had just said to her.

"It wouldn't be a date," he countered quickly. "I just thought… if you were hungry, I'd be happy to eat with you… as friends… or something."

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Right, I'm sure you'll tell everyone we're just eating together as 'friends'… I'm not an idiot, Naruto."

Naruto opened his mouth to tell her that she was doing an excellent impression of one, but caught himself just in time. He took a deep breath and looked around. They were all alone for the moment. In the all the time since he'd woken up in his bed after fighting with Orochimaru and – he suspected – dying, he hadn't had a single moment alone with the girl who had been his best friend in the entire world. Just as Sasuke's almost-request for help had been, this was a chance he couldn't pass up or screw up. He needed Sakura to be his friend if for no other reason than because he hated the lonely feeling he remembered from his childhood and was being forced to live through again.

"Uh, Sakura-chan, I'm… I'm sorry about what I said when you were talking about your… um, dreams for the future during the team meeting." He scratched his head, not sure where to go with this. He'd been meaning to apologize ever since he'd realized that he wasn't trapped in some sort of genjutsu, but had never gotten the chance after she'd ignored him in the forest during Kakashi's test. "I wasn't really myself that day…"

Sakura's eyes didn't lose any of their suspicion, but her face seemed to soften ever so slightly. "Who were you then?"

A guy from the future trapped in his childhood. A guy thinking he was trapped in genjutsu because he was supposed to be a kage level ninja, not a genin. Both were accurate, but – since neither was a thing he could actually _say_ – he went with what he hoped she would like to hear instead. "An asshole?"

Sakura looked surprised by his answer and then allowed a soft chuckle to slip through her lips. "I thought you said you _weren't_ yourself."

"Sakura-chan, that wasn't very nice!" Naruto laughed happily. _This_ was the Sakura he remembered.

Sakura laughed with him, though not quite as happily, and then her eyes shifted in the direction Sasuke had gone and her laughter died down.

Naruto watched her carefully for a moment, trying to guess what he could say to get her to want to be his friend. At this point in time, he quickly realized, there was really only one thing, one person, who could unite them, just as there was the first time around: Sasuke.

"I can help you, if you want," he offered as a half-formed plan popped into his mind. It would be easier to try something like this with Sakura because she would probably just put any advice he gave her out of her head if she didn't like what he had to say. Plus, as he thought about it, he really did have a good idea – or at least he _thought_ it was a good idea.

"Help me with what?"

"Getting Sasuke to like you."

For the first time since he'd started talking to her, maybe for the first time in his younger self's life, and almost definitely for the first time since he'd arrived in the past, Naruto had Sakura's full attention.

"What are you talking about?" she demanded, her cheeks coloring slightly. "This better not be one of your pranks, Naruto."

Naruto quickly waved his hands, "No, no, no, I wouldn't pull a prank on you, Sakura-chan. I'm just saying that I might know how to get Sasuke to like you if you're interested in hearing it."

Sakura's eyes clearly showed that she doubted his comment about not pranking her – making Naruto wonder if he had done so while they were at the Academy; he didn't remember it, but that was hardly proof of his innocence – and probably also doubted the sincerity of his offer. "Why?" she asked suspiciously.

Naruto shrugged, "Why not?"

Sakura cringed. "Well, because you…" her voice trailed off and then she tried again, "I mean, you were always… it wasn't like you tried to hide it…"

Naruto gave her a blank look. "Hide what?"

Sakura took a deep breath and then finally said, "…that you like me."

For a long moment, Naruto stared at her dumbly, having no idea what she was talking about, and then it hit him like… well, like one of her fists after a particularly perverted joke, prank, or jutsu. He hadn't really thought about it until that moment, but all of the girls that were _technically_ his age and would eventually be his friends were people that he could – if he wanted to and could talk them into it – have a romantic relationship with. No one else would think anything of it as they were all about the same age. In his eyes, however, all of them were little more than children at the moment. The idea of having romantic feelings for one of them, or – even worse – _acting_ on romantic feelings for one of them, was disturbing on a number of levels. He felt a little like a pedophile just thinking about it.

"Ohhhh, _that_." An embarrassed chuckle slipped out and he rubbed the back of his neck, "Right, well, I've had some time to come to grips with your feelings about me. Plus, no offense, but you _really_ aren't my type anymore."

Sakura raised an eyebrow at his last comment, but didn't press him any farther, not really wanting to know what he was talking about. "How are you going to help me?" she asked.

"I'll tell you while we eat. Getting kicked by cows and fighting bulls… not to mention the whole pig thing… really worked up my appetite."

"And you're paying?"

"Sure, what are friends for?"

She considered for a moment and then in a voice that still only sounded half-convinced said, "…Fine, but no ramen."

Naruto was willing to compromise on some things for the sake of the friendship that he so desperately wanted to start building, but this was not one of them… not unless he absolutely had to. "Hey, I'm the one paying," he pointed out with a shake of his head. "I get to pick the restaurant. You only get to pick if you're paying or we're on a _date_."

Sakura sighed resignedly. "Ramen it is."

Naruto grinned from ear to ear and offered her his arm. Sakura pointedly ignored it as she walked past him.

ooo

It took Sakura and Naruto nearly fifteen minutes to make their way to the Ichiraku Ramen Bar, twice as long as Sakura thought it should have taken them. For whatever reason Naruto was walking as slowly as possible, his eyes locked onto his feet as though he were measuring each step. She couldn't remember when he'd started doing it, but was certain that it had been going on since around the time they'd been assigned to Team Seven. It was possible, of course, that he'd always done it and she just hadn't ever noticed – at the Academy she'd never bothered looking at him any more than she had to – but in her mind it seemed a rather new habit.

Sakura's eyes darted back and forth searching the crowd for anyone who might recognize her and think that she was on a date with her blond teammate. The cynical part of her brain tried to convince her that Naruto was intentionally taking his time to increase the likelihood that they'd be seen together so he could tell any former classmates they happened upon that they were on a date. She didn't think that Naruto was bright enough to come up with such an underhanded plan, but that didn't stop her from increasing her pace so that she was at least four steps in front of him. Enough that it would appear as though Naruto was simply following her.

Naruto didn't seem to notice her actions. He didn't pick up his own pace to stay next to her nor did he even take his eyes off his feet.

It wasn't until the restaurant came into sight that Naruto began to walk faster. Head still down, he pulled even with her and grinned like a little kid. "I'll race you."

Sakura rolled her eyes and refused to answer him as he took off running. About half way there, he took an abnormally large step and stumbled, his feet getting tangled up. He started to fall, but managed to right his feet in time to save himself from a dirt appetizer. A half-second later he was running again and this time managed to get all the way to his goal without incident.

Sakura shook her head, she was certain she'd never met anyone as awkward and clumsy as Uzumaki Naruto.

By the time she arrived, Naruto was sitting at the bar, his feet barely grazing the floor as they swung under his stool. He had already ordered for the both of them, which sounded annoyingly like something someone would do for his date, but at least he hadn't ordered anything disgusting or spicy for her, simply getting her a bowl of miso. Their food arrived in short order and Naruto gave the most heartfelt "Itadakimasu" she'd ever heard before digging into his bowl with gusto.

Sakura picked at her food slowly, eating little more than a noodle at a time, occasionally only sucking broth from the wood of her chopsticks. Ramen was high in calories and low in nutritional value, possibly the worst thing a girl on a diet could be forced to eat. While she thought up new and inventive ways of _not_ eating and still appearing to enjoy the meal, she stole glances out of the corner of her eye at her teammate, wishing he would hurry up and start talking so she could leave before he did anything too weird.

Naruto, however, just ignored her. His chopsticks were nearly a blur moving in and out of his bowl, keeping a steady stream of noodles moving into his mouth. At one point, he missed his mouth, hitting himself in the cheek. He frowned and cursed and muttered something about his arms still feeling short and then went back to eating as though nothing had happened.

Sakura had a lot of practice at being ignored. As a little girl she'd done her best to blend in with the background for fear that the other girls would notice her enormous forehead and tease her. After their falling out, Ino and her friends would occasionally ignore her for several days at a time. And, sadly, Sasuke often ignored her when she was trying to get his attention. The one person who had never ignored her, much as she might wish him to, was Naruto who (up until they were put on Team Seven, at which point he had eased off considerably) constantly tried to talk to her or get her to laugh at his idiotic, immature antics. Now that they were eating together – and after he'd promised to help her get her heart's desire – his eyes hadn't even flickered in her direction, it was annoying.

When he finished his noodles he lifted the bowl to his mouth, downed the broth, and then signaled for another bowl to Teuchi. The gray haired man who owned the shop was just about the first person Sakura had ever seen who actually seemed happy to see Naruto. It wasn't hard to guess why the man liked the troublemaker; Naruto probably ate enough ramen to keep the restaurant's finances in the black all by himself.

After another few minutes, Sakura was growing very tired of being ignored and was beginning to suspect that Naruto had tricked her into going out with him. In fact, she wouldn't have been surprised if Naruto ran off as soon as he finished his meal and left her with the check!

His very presence was beginning to annoy her and the sight of him happily eating his meal while her stomach ached for food it wasn't allowed to have was shortening her already short fuse. He'd told her he knew how she could get Sasuke to like her, so why was he taking his sweet time telling her? Didn't he understand how important that sort of information was to her? Or did he really have no idea how she could get Sasuke's affections and was only stalling for time before he admitted as much and left her with the bill?

Finally Sakura gave up any pretense of eating and glared at Naruto until he looked at her.

"Ew I 'ave fomefing on 'y 'ace?" he asked through the noodles he'd just shoved into his mouth.

"You told me you knew how I could get Sasuke-kun to like me, so tell me how to do it already," she demanded.

Naruto swallowed and went back to staring straight ahead, his eyes seeming to gloss over as a strange change came over his face – suddenly he almost looked mature, like he was an adult or something. For almost a full minute he was totally silent and then, without looking at her, he casually asked, "You worked hard on your mission today, so why aren't you eating your food?"

Sakura was caught off guard by the question and it took her a moment to answer. "I'm just not hungry right now."

"Not hungry or _dieting_?"

She felt her face flush and it angered her that he would even call attention to something so personal. "That's none of your business!" she snapped.

Naruto simply shrugged, not bothered by the venom in her voice or her anger over his rudeness. "It won't work, you know. You'll never have a body like the one you think you wan—"

Her fist shot out without warning, but a split second before it could connect and send him flying through the wall of the restaurant, Naruto leaned back off his stool, his knees slamming painfully into the countertop in an effort to keep him from falling. Had it not been for the loud crash of his knees and the flailing of his arms as he struggled to keep his precarious balance on the edge of the stool, he might have almost looked cool avoiding her attack in such a casual way. As it was, they both looked stupid and a few of the other patrons gave them curious or irritated glances.

The surprise of missing was the only thing that kept Sakura from throwing another punch and it lasted just long enough for Naruto to sit back properly on his seat.

"Damn short legs," he grumbled as he massaged the spot that had hit the counter. Then he straightened up and turned towards her, "Sakura-chan, Sasuke doesn't care about how skinny you are… or at least there isn't any point in starving yourself over it even if he does. If all Sasuke cares about is a girl's body, Ino's going to be the one he goes for…"

Sakura's knuckles popped as her hands curled into fists again.

"…and if he's that shallow, you can do better anyway," he finished quickly and then his arms flew up to block the anticipated punch.

Fortunately for him, she didn't try to hit him a second time, though she certainly had been ready to. "What do you mean?"

"You're pretty, Sakura-chan, but Ino's going to have the better body… it's just the way she's built. It won't matter though, unless Sasuke is only interested in a girl's chest and waist size."

"Sasuke-kun isn't like that," Sakura insisted quickly.

"Well, then why are you so worried about your body?"

Sakura thought for a moment and then said, "Because Fuki-chan said that her sister heard a friend say that Sasuke-kun only liked thin girls."

Naruto rolled his eyes and shook his head. "And how would her sister's friend know?"

Sakura didn't have an answer for that. All she'd known was that the other girls were going on diets – except for annoying Ino-pig who was already perfectly slender – so she'd decided to go on one as well.

Naruto took her lack of response for an answer and then asked, "What do you even know about Sasuke that you haven't heard from some friend of a friend whose mother's uncle's dog's playmate heard through the grapevine?"

Sakura opened her mouth to offer a long, detailed list of Sasuke's habits, grades, and other tidbits she'd learned about the reclusive Uchiha over the years, but Naruto cut her off before she could regale him with her knowledge.

"I mean about the sort of girl he likes."

The pink haired kunoichi thought hard for a moment and then had to admit that she didn't know anything that wasn't secondhand knowledge. It was annoying that Naruto was pointing out something so obvious and even worse was that it hadn't even occurred to her before he pointed it out… and probably wouldn't have if he hadn't mentioned it.

Naruto smiled and then asked, "And what do you and I know about his likes and dislikes that nobody but Kakashi-sensei knows?"

The way he said it brought the answer immediately to mind, but also left her feeling as though something were off about their conversation. Naruto was leading her by the nose towards an answer but was doing so through questions so she might end up thinking that it was partly her idea rather than completely his when she finally arrived at whatever conclusion he was trying to get her to see.

"He said there's plenty that he dislikes and almost nothing that he likes," she recited. Naruto's smile widened and Sakura's feelings about the conversation were confirmed. "So you're saying that there's nothing I could do to get him to like me since he doesn't like hardly anything?"

"No, nothing like that," the blond laughed, "though I think that your choice in the man of your dreams leaves something to be desired. I just thought you ought to realize that throwing yourself at him and trying to do all those other things to get him to like you weren't going to work… and they aren't going to work for Ino or anyone else, either."

"You said you could help me," she pointed out, growing tired of being led through all of these hoops by him. "How are you going to do that?"

"I bet you could figure it out if you thought about the last part of what he said."

"He said he wanted to restore his clan…"

Naruto threw his head back and laughed so hard he actually fell out of his chair landing with a thump on the ground. "I should have known you'd think of that first!"

"That was part of the last thing he said!" Sakura insisted as she glared down at him.

"Yeah, the part that involves you and him in bed…" Naruto held up a hand to the side of his face and whispered loudly, "Sakura-chan, I think you're a closet-pervert!"

Sakura's eyes narrowed until they were slits as she slid off her stool and prepared to end his short life.

"Now, now Sakura-chan," Naruto giggled, scooting along the floor away from her, "if you kill me, you'll never know how to get Sasuke."

His words stopped her from going on a murderous rampage, but didn't curb her desire to stomp him into the ground. "Tell me," she demanded in a voice that warned him to get there and get there quickly or suffer the consequences.

"He wants to kill someone," Naruto answered calmly.

"So you think I have to kill someone for him?" Sakura asked, her anger dying in a sea of confusion.

"Geez, I hope not," Naruto chuckled, "if you did, I'd really tell you to give up on the bastard and go after someone else. I just meant that all Sasuke seems to care about is killing someone. So if you want him to like you or at least see you as being worthy of a little attention…"

"I have to help him kill that person?"

"Exactly," Naruto said with a smile that Sakura was sure she'd seen her own father and several teachers give her when she managed to puzzle her way through a difficult problem and find the answer they wanted her to find. It was a very strange expression to see on Naruto's face. "Sasuke said that he the things he really wants are to kill someone and restore his clan, probably in that order. So if you want to be around for the restoring part, you probably should be able to help him do the killing."

"So how do I do that?"

Naruto stood and dusted off his pants, his stupid knowing smile bigger than ever. He reached into one of his pockets and retrieved a large green frog wallet from which he pulled some money and casually tossed it on the bar between his two empty bowls and her lone full one. "Show him you aren't just one of those girls who follows him around hoping he'll toss them a bone…" his eyebrow twitched and Sakura could see the cogs in his head working, "…or maybe they're hoping he'll—"

"Don't say it!" she yelled, stopping what was sure to be an inappropriate and embarrassing joke.

Naruto frowned and shrugged, no doubt thinking she was missing out on something funny and then turned and started to walk away. He only took about four shuffling steps before he stopped and looked back at her. He hesitated for a moment, debating whether or not he wanted to say what was on the tip of his tongue, but then took the plunge. "Do you mind if I tell you what I really think, Sakura-chan?"

Sakura's eyes narrowed once more. "Not if you're going to say that I should give up on Sasuke-kun and go out with—"

Naruto shook his head. "No," he stopped and reconsidered, "Well, yes and no, really. I honestly think you should stop chasing Sasuke, but not so you'll go out with me… or anyone else for that matter. Sasuke doesn't need a girlfriend right now, he just needs a friend. If you really care about him you won't train with him so you can get in his pants. You'll do it to help him."

Sakura's jaw flexed at the 'get in his pants' comment, but she couldn't find it in her to get angry at Naruto, especially when he sounded sincere and so… _right_. This new Naruto was something she had no idea how to react to, it felt like Iruka-sensei or her father had temporarily taken control of Naruto's brain. The change was jarring after years of dealing with the usual stupid, annoying, childish Naruto.

Naruto watched her for a moment longer and then turned to leave, casually waving his hand without looking back at her. "See you tomorrow Sakura-chan. Next time you want advice, you're paying."

Sakura stared after him, not sure if she should be annoyed or thankful. He hadn't done anything too embarrassing or tried to turn their "friendly" meal into a date and to top it all off, his idea – much as she hated to admit it – wasn't a bad one… actually, it was pretty good.

Sasuke _had_ said those things, after all, and he never seemed to care much for those girls who followed him around, even the ones with the perfect bodies and normal sized foreheads like Ino. Maybe he really would only respect the sort of girl who could help him train to kill whoever it was that he hated so much.

Even Naruto's advice about giving up on Sasuke wasn't as horrible an idea as it would have sounded to her in a different conversation. Basically he wasn't telling her to give up on the love of her life, just to become Sasuke's friend first because that was what he really needed. It was the sort of advice she'd read once or twice in her magazines, but had never considered actually applying towards her own situation.

The question was how had Naruto of all people realized this potential answer when the rest of the female population in their class hadn't seen it? Naruto wasn't smart. He didn't watch Sasuke all that carefully. He'd tried talking to Sasuke quite a few times since they'd become Team Seven, but hadn't really gotten all that much more out of the Uchiha than anyone else… and most of what he'd tried to talk to Sasuke about was about their missions or some taijutsu move that Kakashi had just taught them… like he was trying to get Sasuke to be his friend…

And during that first morning, before Kakashi's test, he'd said something about seeing why all of the girls liked Sasuke-kun…

And then he'd just told her that he didn't like her like _that_ anymore because she wasn't his 'type'…

Sakura shook her head. No way. Naruto couldn't be… could he?

She looked back longingly at her cold bowl of ramen that Teuchi was cleaning up and sighed. "Has Naruto been acting weird lately?" she asked the old man.

"Well," Teuchi pushed back his white paper hat and scratched his head thoughtfully, "he cried about week ago when he stopped by, but that might have just been because he poked himself in the eye with his chopsticks… other than that? No weirder than usual. Why do you ask?"

Sakura shrugged, putting the idea out of her head, and then turned to head home, vowing to eat everything her mother put in front of her until she was well and truly full. It was a bit strange that Naruto had figured something out before everyone else – assuming that his little plan actually worked – but at least he'd given her an excuse to satisfy her aching stomach. For that alone, she'd overlook the weirdness of the whole thing.

Just this once.

o

o

A/N: I just know I'm going to hear complaints about Naruto remaining an idiot in this story… sorry, it's just his nature… and besides that, milking a cow would be boring to him, so I doubt he'd pay enough attention to get it right, especially since he's got the fate of the world on his mind and all.

I tried waiting until next Friday before posting, but at 31 reviews for the last chapter (more than any chapter in any other story I've ever written) I just couldn't bring myself to wait. Heck, I was itching to post by Sunday! What can I say, I'm a review addict. I know I have a problem, but I just can't change… maybe this website needs to host some sort of review addiction help seminar.

Anyway, the next chapter will begin a series of four or five that will all come out pretty quick (every two or three days, I think). This is because we'll be dealing with the Wave Country and I don't feel like hearing all month about how boring it is. I figure if we push through it in a week or so, we can get on to bigger and better things and no one will have too much reason to complain. Also, the upcoming chapter will be a bit of a cliffhanger and I always feel bad making people wait long after one of those. Let's see if I can at least make it to the weekend before caving in and posting again…

Anyway, thanks for reading. Please review and let me know what you thought.


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

o

The horizon was just beginning to turn golden as the approaching dawn ushered in another beautiful day in Konoha. Some of the citizens had already been up for a few hours, the scent of fresh baked breads and other breakfast foods could be smelled all around the village, while others were only beginning to stir in their warm beds. The Hokage Tower was open, but not busy yet, that wouldn't begin until after the great gates opened and the rest of the village had risen from its slumber, but a few civilians dressed in clothing ranging from rags to tailored suits as well as ninja of various levels could be seen entering and exiting already, many yawning as they did so. Some where picking up missions, some were requesting them, and others were just milling about as they waited for a meeting they were early for.

Naruto saw all of them from his perch on the roof of a nearby building. He wasn't sure how long he'd been crouching there, but his muscles ached and he longed to allow himself to stretch. Despite his discomfort, he didn't move from his spot or even look away from the activity below him for fear that he might be distracted and miss who he was looking for. It had been three days already since he'd decided upon this quest and he had yet to find her. This was, however, the first morning that he had woken so early and he was feeling confident that this time he wouldn't be disappointed.

His conversation with Sakura the previous week and the changes it seemed to be making with her had given him new hope and confidence that he actually would be able to pull off this insane idea of 'fixing' the future and wouldn't just end up with a bigger mess than he already had on his hands.

She no longer bothered Sasuke for dates the way she previously had, but rather asked him if he'd like to go practice their taijutsu further and even asked him if he could help her become more accurate with her kunai throws. So far, Naruto hadn't seen him actually take her up on her offers, but he _had_ given her a few pointers once or twice. He also seemed far less annoyed with her when she spoke to him and that was the first good sign Naruto had seen since waking up in the past. Sakura apparently noticed as well and had redoubled her efforts to become useful to him in whatever way she could, even staying after Kakashi had dismissed them and training on her own.

Naruto was glad that she was starting to become more like the woman he remembered her as – even if it was just a little – and hoped that Sasuke would start taking her up on her offer occasionally. He'd never gotten the chance to find out how Sasuke felt about her in the future, but maybe they could at least be good friends and there was always a chance that he'd eventually return her feelings… you couldn't restore a clan without some Uchiha babies, after all, and that took a woman who was willing to bear those babies. Sakura was as good a candidate for the job as anyone else who might want it… probably even a better candidate than most since she actually stood a chance of getting to know him for more than his looks and money.

The problem was: what was Naruto supposed to do now?

All of his conversations with Sasuke were what Naruto had dubbed: "Sasuke can't be bothered with you" conversations. They generally involved him asking Sasuke if he'd like to hang out or train or something and Sasuke telling that he had better things to do. The only other type of conversation they had were the ones in which Sasuke dropped veiled insults about Naruto's abilities even though Naruto was now only making the occasional intentional mistake on the missions. Clearly he would just have to wait for old man Tazuna and their mission to the Wave Country before he could start working on his future friend. After the disaster during their farming mission, it was clear that Sasuke wasn't going to come to him for any sort of training or help unless he was dragged kicking and screaming and Naruto didn't want that. If he could just wait until they went to the Wave Country everything would work out fine the way it had before…

Unfortunately, Naruto couldn't remember exactly _when_ they were given that mission and was beginning to grow impatient. Now that he had his body under control (there were still a few slip-ups, but they were so few and far between that they were probably just legitimate clumsiness rather than issues caused by traveling backwards through time and space), it seemed that he should be making some large strides towards creating the utopia he envisioned for this second chance at the future. Instead he was just sitting around doing boring missions, being taught taijutsu and team tactics by Kakashi that he either already knew or knew something that worked better, and watching Sakura making strides towards becoming Sasuke's friend while he was still seen as being the dead-last on the team.

It was because of this frustration that he now found himself on rooftop perch spying on those entering and exiting the Hokage Tower. He'd spent several nights thinking long and hard about what he could do at this early stage to change the future that he'd come from and had only been able to think of one person who actually might need and accept his help: Hinata.

She was, really, his only option at the moment. Shikamaru, Chouji, and Ino all had fairly normal, safe lives – so far as he'd ever heard – until Sasuke's defection. On top of that, Shikamaru wasn't the sort of person he wanted to be around too much if he could help it. It was bad enough that he had to deal with Kakashi and all of his genius on a daily basis; he doubted he could fool two of them for any extended length of time. Kiba, Akamaru, and Shino were probably struggling to complete their missions – in part because of Hinata, though Naruto doubted it was all her fault – but that was about their only worry in life at the moment.

Though Rock Lee was rapidly becoming a clone of Maito Gai, Naruto was certain that the process was already irreversible by this point; even if he was allowed to live five lifetimes over again he probably couldn't stop it. Neji had a stick up his ass, but he'd live and Naruto knew that he would change that during the Chuunin Exam. Plus, he wasn't really sure how he could possibly help Neji without fighting him the way he had originally and on a list of stupid things he could do to call unwanted attention to himself, beating down the Hyuuga clan's greatest genius was probably pretty near the top. Tenten's only trouble was that she had to deal with Neji and all his depressing talk about fate as well as Gai and Lee and their babbling about "the power of youth." Naruto felt sorry for her, but she'd come out of it just fine the first time around.

Sai was still a member of Root and Naruto had no idea where he could find him or what he would do and say if he did. Taking down that organization's leader, Danzo, was an even worse idea than beating up Neji… though Naruto really hated to admit it.

Though Naruto wished he could do something for the future Kazekage, Gaara and his siblings lived too far away for him to do anything for them. They would just have to survive, as they had originally, until the Chuunin Exam before he could start working on them. Gaara had been trapped in loneliness and near-insanity for years by this point, a few more months wouldn't hurt him too much, it hadn't the first time around anyway.

The current Leaf jounin were all capable of taking care of themselves for a few more years, at least, and old man Hokage wasn't in any immediate danger either. As near as Naruto could tell, that left Hinata – whose life was full of scorn and self-depreciation that she didn't deserve – and the traitor Kabuto as the only ones whose lives he could and should start messing with.

Of those two, Hinata was the one he'd decided on. As much as he wanted to hunt down and kill Kabuto, there was no way Naruto could find him without looking extremely suspicious. A genin – particularly a twelve year old genin who had only been a ninja for a few weeks – had no business asking about random older genin. Asking about Kabuto's location would only raise questions that he didn't think he could answer… especially when the bastard turned up dead shortly thereafter.

He was already beginning to think that Kakashi might suspect that he wasn't the Naruto he was supposed to be. Little comments he'd made, odd glances here and there… Kakashi was definitely too observant for Naruto's good and would be much too clever to miss the fact that a fellow Leaf-nin had been killed not long after Naruto had been asking where to find him. If that happened, there'd be no telling what Kakashi's reaction would be.

No, it had to be Hinata. Besides, he owed her more than he could make up with just the halfhearted apology he'd given her that first day when he still thought she was little more than a piece of an elaborate genjutsu.

The young Hyuuga had always been quiet and unsure of herself when they were kids. She'd even fainted a couple of times for some reason when he'd dropped in on her unexpectedly and often spent more time looking at the ground and apologizing than she did talking to him. That had eventually changed and she had become one of his close friends, especially after Sakura's death. Unfortunately, the timidity of her youth damaged to her reputation amongst her clan beyond repair. The elders refused to accept her as the Head of the Clan after her father's death, instead choosing a man that they did approve of and arranging for her to marry him so that the lines of succession would remain intact.

The man chosen, Hyuuga Hiroshi, was little more than a career politician. He'd served as a jounin for a while, endowed with the genius that all Hyuuga seemed to possess, and then, after being injured on a mission, had become an advisor for someone that everyone felt was important (though he wasn't important enough for Naruto to remember his name). Hiroshi was also member of the Head Family, naturally, and had many friends and allies amongst the elders of the Hyuuga clan – which explained how he was able to jump to such an important position after such a boring career.

As soon as the marriage was announced, Hiroshi began setting up appointments to meet with Naruto. The meetings were boring, long, full of a lot of butt-kissing, and discussions of plans for the future of the village and the Hyuuga that Naruto had no intention of implementing. Despite how dull the meetings were, the fact that Hiroshi worked so hard to get into Naruto's good graces would have been flattering had he not already hated the man for being party to forcing Hinata into a marriage that he was sure she didn't want and had he not heard from Shino that Hiroshi was also telling members of the village Council that a new leader with more experience and less "baggage" was needed to take over the position of Hokage.

Even with all that, he might have learned to at least tolerate the man, but then he had stopped by the Hyuuga manor to see Hinata and found a dark bruise on her face that he was certain didn't come from a sparring match – no matter how much she insisted that it had. After that, his loathing Hiroshi became a venomous hatred that was second only to his hatred of Orochimaru… well, that was overstating it a bit, but he certainly had made it into the top ten.

He wouldn't allow that bastard to become leader of the Hyuuga and he certainly wouldn't let him marry Hinata, not a second time. When Hinata had told him of her impending marriage, she had mentioned – after some prodding on Naruto's part – that there was a way out of it, but refused to tell him what it was. He'd thought about it for years even after her marriage, but never was able to guess what she could have been talking about. That meant that this time around – since he clearly wasn't smart enough to figure it out – he would have to make it so that the mysterious escape clause was never needed. He was going to make sure that Hinata was the best damn Hyuuga the elders had ever seen… or at least second best, just behind Neji.

Now if only he could find her!

"Stinkin' Kurenai," he grumbled as a new group of not-Hinata or her teammates appeared, "I thought you were supposed to be the responsible one."

He let his eyes travel from one side of the courtyard leading up to the Tower to the other even though he was certain that he'd already looked all of those people over and shook his head; obviously Asuma was a bad influence on her. Were it not for the fact that their offspring was going to be a cute baby and would be loaded with natural talent he might have jokingly considered trying to get her to dump the lazy bearded jounin, but only jokingly.

The two's relationship had become public while he was away training with Jiraiya, followed shortly thereafter by marriage and later by Kurenai's pregnancy. Because Asuma was killed just a short while after Naruto returned from his training, he never got the chance to see them officially together. He had, however, heard on several occasions that the two of them clearly belonged with one another… and who was he to argue with an expert like Ino?

Another ten minutes went by and the area surrounding the Tower began to fill up with more and more ninja and other people with business there. Soon it would be impossible to keep track of who he'd already looked at and who was a new arrival. It wouldn't be long before Naruto would be unable to spot even someone as distinct as Kurenai, never mind Hinata, who was always trying to remain unseen.

As it turned out, he had already missed them enter the Tower, but fortunately spotted them as they came out, mostly because Kiba was practically dancing with excitement while Akamaru, caught up in his friend's exuberance, barked loudly from his perch atop Kiba's head. Naruto himself almost felt like doing a little jig as he rose to his feet and watched them for a moment.

It was strange to see Team Eight as children again. He'd already seen Hinata, of course, but that was when he thought that everything around him was nothing more than the powerful genjutsu, Tsukuyomi. To see them now, realizing that they really were children again was almost as strange as the first time he'd looked at his own teammates.

Shino was wearing a grey coat with a high collar and the dark sunglasses that everyone in his clan seemed to wear. Over the years Naruto had actually forgotten what Shino's hair looked like as he'd taken to wearing a hood that was almost never removed when he got older, but now his poofy, dark hair –he'd clearly inherited it from his father as Shino's mother had straight hair that actually obeyed gravity – could be easily spotted even from the distance. Looking at it now, Naruto wondered if Shino had started wearing his hood in an effort to hide his hair and make himself even less conspicuous than he already was… that sounded like something an eternal pragmatist like him would do.

Kiba was wearing a similar coat with the hood pulled up. His hair was either already as long as he'd worn it as an adult or the hood and jacket were lined with dark fur that looked just like his hair, probably the latter since it looked like he had a lot more arm hair than Naruto remembered him possessing as an adult. Akamaru sat on his head, happily wagging his white tail and giving no sign that he would eventually be the enormous dog that Kiba had been able to ride into battle.

"Hinata-chan!" Naruto called out as he stepped off the rooftop and ran straight down the wall, seeming to bend gravity to his will (though it was little more than simple chakra manipulation).

Team Eight looked over at him in surprise as did everyone else who heard him – most only looked at him long enough to see who he was and then quickly made it a point to ignore him, while those from outside the village continued to stare for a little while longer. He quickly pushed his way through the crowd, not bothering to respond to the angry muttering he heard every time he pushed someone a little more than was appreciated, until he reached his future friends.

"Hey, Hinata-chan, how's it going?" he asked with a large, happy grin.

For the first time that he could remember, Hinata didn't really smile at his greeting; she only stared down at the ground and pushed her fingers together.

Her lack of any sort of real reply left him feeling flatfooted. "Er… Hinata-chan, are you okay?"

"I… I'm s-sorry, Naruto, but m-my team has a mission," she whispered so quietly he almost didn't hear her.

Naruto stared at her in confusion for a moment, feeling awkward and incredibly uncomfortable. Hinata had never called him just 'Naruto.' When he was the Hokage, she almost always called him 'Naruto-sama' even when he asked her not to and when they were younger she'd always called him 'Naruto-kun.' What was even weirder was the tone of her voice, even whispered as it was, made it sound like she was actually trying to be rude… as quietly and gently as possible.

"Oh… uh, right… yeah, I, uh…" The conversation had gone much smoother in his head when he planned it out a few days earlier. Of course, when he planned it out, he'd assumed Hinata would be at least mildly happy to see him instead of looking like she wished to see anyone _but_ him. "…I just wanted to ask if you'd… um, like to hang out or… uh, train… you know, sometime…"

"P-perhaps," she whispered, still refusing to look him in the eye. "W-when we return, m-maybe."

Naruto nodded, his brain working furiously to figure out why she was acting that way. Every possibility from 'replaced by a disguised enemy' to 'contracting a personality-altering virus' ran through his mind, but were discarded until at last he hit on what he thought was the most logical, but least _probable_ theory:

Hinata was _mad_ at him.

Over the years he'd done many things that he thought Hinata would have had a good reason to be mad at him over. Sending her sister and cousin on the missions that had claimed their lives, not stopping her clan from forcing her to marry Hiroshi, being a moping baby every few weeks (or even every other day) who didn't want to be responsible for all the things that he was responsible for… Any of those would have been perfectly good reasons to become annoyed or angry with him, maybe even hate him, but Hinata had never shown him anything but kindness. How had he managed to do something in a few weeks that he'd never been able to do in nearly thirty years? How as it even possible that she would be mad at him in this timeline when she never had been in the previous? He'd barely even spoken to her!

Hinata and her team started walking away, but Naruto's hand shot out and caught her by the wrist, pulling her gently back towards him. "Are you mad at me, Hinata-chan?" he asked.

Hinata bit her lip and kept her eyes away from him.

The fact that she didn't immediately begin stammering about him being mistaken while quickly apologizing and taking the blame for making him think such a thing was as sure a sign as Naruto had ever seen.

He opened his mouth to say something, but wasn't sure what exactly should come out. He could apologize, but he didn't know what he'd be apologizing for or he could ask her what he'd done to make her angry, but that might only make her madder at him – as was sometimes the case with Ino and Sakura. Kiba saved him from sitting there like an idiot with his mouth hanging open and his brain trying to decide which option involved less risk.

"Come on, dumb ass, leave Hinata alone! We've got a big, important mission to get to," the taller boy yelled. Akamaru barked in agreement.

"A _big_ mission?" Naruto asked dumbly still staring at Hinata.

"Yup, and the client's kind of a jerk. So leave her alone, you're making us late!"

Hinata finally managed to look up at Naruto and he thought she almost appeared sorry to have to leave, but then – without so much as a goodbye – she dropped her head again and joined her team as they walked towards the gates.

Naruto watched them disappear into the crowd and then cursed under his breath. If it was possible for him to make Hinata mad at him, who knew what _other_ trouble he could get into?

ooo

"Sasuke, report."

"I have the packages and am waiting in position."

"Sakura-chan?"

"All set, I'll be at the drop off point in less than a minute."

"Naruto?"

"…"

"Naruto?"

"…"

"Naruto, what is your status?"

"Hey dummy! Wake up! Where are you?"

It was Sakura's voice that finally cut through the haze surrounding Naruto's brain, "Uh… what?"

"Have you picked up your portion of the list?" Kakashi asked through his headset.

Naruto looked down at the list in his hand and then up at the marketplace spread out before him. "Uh… no…"

"Damn it, Naruto!" Sakura voice yelled through the earphone. "We're supposed to be done in less than ten minutes!"

"Right… yeah, I'll, uh… I'll get right on it." Naruto switched off his radio so he wouldn't have to listen to anymore complaints and looked down at the piece of paper in his hand. Eggs, milk, tuna, bread, apples, radishes, onions, flour, cheese, and sugar. It would take him more than ten minutes just to collect all of those items, let alone make it back to… wherever he was supposed to take them.

"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" he called out as he brought his fingers together. A second later, five additional Narutos were standing with him. Each was given two items to collect and then the small army of blonds rushed into the marketplace while Naruto picked a spot in the shade to sit down and think some more. All day he'd been unable to think anything but the meeting Hinata earlier that morning and what he could possibly have done to upset her in such a short period of time when he'd barely even seen her. Despite having devoted most of his time to the problem – and his performance during the mission had shown how little attention he'd paid to it – he still wasn't able to think of a single thing he could have done… unless she was still mad about him dislocating his finger, but she hadn't even been _that_ mad about it at the time…

It only took his clones a few minutes to return with the groceries they'd been sent for, not nearly enough time for him to make any headway with the Hinata problem.

"Okay, I've got the supplies," he reported into his headset after turning it back on, "I'm on my way…"

"Hurry up," Kakashi replied, "you only have about three minutes before the time we said we'd be done."

"Yeah, no problem…" Naruto easily leaped onto the roof of the nearest building, looked around, and then asked, "Uh, where were we supposed to meet again?"

Three voices groaned and then Sakura gave him directions.

ooo

A pretty woman herding four young, rambunctious children had just arrived at her front doorstep where Kakashi, Sasuke, and Sakura were waiting for her when Naruto seemed to appear out of nowhere, red faced and panting hard. The woman stared at Naruto for a moment, trying to place his face, before her eyes widened and she quickly shooed her children inside as she took a step away from him. Naruto ignored both her and her reaction, instead handing the bags of groceries to Kakashi and then walking to a nearby tree where he sat down and wiped sweat from his face, muttering about being out of shape.

Kakashi gave his student only the briefest of glances before turning back to the woman and helping Sasuke and Sakura take the groceries inside. It took only a moment for the final chore of their mission to be completed and then he led his team – with Naruto trailing behind them – back to the Hokage Tower to report on the success of the mission.

Along the way Sakura, who normally preferred to walk next to Sasuke and – up until just recently – trying to get him to talk to her, slowed her pace until Naruto caught up with her. "You were paying less attention than usual today," she pointed out without really looking at him. "It was like you were somewhere else."

Naruto's head jerked up in surprise and then he smiled for the first time in hours. "It was nothing; I just didn't sleep well last night."

Sakura frowned, "You're a bad liar."

Naruto let out a loud gasp and then tripped, falling face first into the cement sidewalk. _'You're a bad liar'_ was one of the last things Sakura – his Sakura – had ever said to him as he knelt next to her in a dark cave and helplessly watched her blood drain out of her. He'd told her that her injuries weren't that bad, that he'd have her patched up in no time, that everything was going to be just fine. She'd smiled up at him, weakly reaching up a trembling hand to cup his face and wipe away his tears… and then she'd said the last words that he'd ever thought he'd hear from her and they started with: "_You're a bad liar."_

Sakura knelt next to him, all pretenses of not really walking next to him or talking to him vanishing. "Geez, are you okay?" she asked, actually sounding concerned which surprised Naruto further.

He got to his knees and looked at the scrapes on his hands, knowing there would probably be some on his face as well. Iruka would no doubt laugh at him for getting injured on a grocery collecting mission, but that was okay. It was always nice seeing Iruka smile and the image of that smile helped push back thoughts of the dark cave that he would never let _this_ Sakura enter. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Naruto stood and the two picked up their pace so they could keep up with Sasuke and Kakashi who were now quite far ahead. After a few paces, he looked over at Sakura and then said, "Hey, Sakura-chan, you're a girl, right?"

Sakura's eyebrow twitched and her hand curled into a fist. "Yeah… I'm a girl."

Naruto missed the signs that would have warned him that he was already in danger and should proceed with extreme caution; he was already beginning to lose himself once more in thoughts of why Hinata would be mad at him. It was either think about that or think about the day Sakura died and he had no desire to go through that again. "So, do all girls just get mad over nothing… or is it just yo—"

A loud crack echoed down the street as Sakura's fist connected solidly with Naruto's cheek, sending him crashing into the side of a nearby building.

Sitting upside down with a swollen cheek and one eye that could barely open anymore, Naruto watched Sakura storm off towards Sasuke and Kakashi, who both gave her plenty of space as she continued past them. He should have seen that one coming, Sakura might have changed a little, but it was still far too early to be going to her for advice. He righted himself, rose unsteadily to his feet, and did his best to catch up.

ooo

Naruto's first thought upon being dismissed for the afternoon – besides wanting to take a long soak to ease the pain from the beating he'd had to let Sasuke give him during their training session and the one Sakura had given him on the walk to Tower after their mission – was to hunt down Hinata and try to fix things, but then he began to wonder if she didn't need some time to get over it the Sakura and Ino often had when he accidentally pissed them off. Going by the logic that Sakura and Ino were girls and they needed time to cool off before they were willing to forgive him, and that Hinata was also a girl, therefore Hinata would probably need some time to cool down, he decided to give her the time she needed before storming the Hyuuga compound to apologize for whatever crime he'd inadvertently committed.

So instead of looking for her that afternoon, he waited a full day – which seemed like more than enough time for someone to get over something – before he even started to really keep an eye open for her. After two days of hoping to just run into her or spot her in the crowd, he began to actively search for her during his free time. He woke early and watched the crowds arrive at the Tower. He wandered around near the Hyuuga compound. He checked the training grounds whenever he had the chance, hoping to catch her team practicing.

Nothing.

He saw plenty of other people that he knew or would eventually know, but Team Eight was no where to be seen.

After it had been nearly five full days since he'd last seen her, he finally decided that he'd have to ask someone. The next morning, after they had been given yet another D Rank mission – leaving him once again wondering how long he had to wait before Tazuna showed up – he walked over to his old teacher, Umuino Iruka, and said, "Uh, Iruka-sensei, have you seen Team Eight recently?"

The chuunin looked surprised at the question, but after a moment's thought he smiled kindly. "They're out on a mission, Naruto, and aren't expected back for another week at least."

Naruto's eyes widened. D Rank missions were almost always conducted within the village – though a few took place in the surrounding area – and generally took only a day or a few hours to complete. Some might run as long as two or even three days, but never for more than that. "You gave them a _C Rank_ mission?"

Iruka grinned nervously and the scar running across his cheeks and nose seeming to grin with him as he adjusted the spiky, black ponytail sticking out of the top of his head. "Well, Kiba asked… uh… _loudly_ for something more challenging even though his team wasn't always doing that great on the D Rank missions they'd been given. I didn't think they were ready, but Kurenai-sensei felt that her team would be able to handle it and so we found them a relatively easy one that we'd been waiting to assign to one of the more experienced genin teams." He shuffled some papers and then continued, "There was a bridge builder who had come in a few days before wanting some bodyguards to protect him from bandits while he traveled back to his home in the Wave Country…"

Naruto didn't hear another word that was said. His stomach dropped into his feet and his heart stopped beating while the blood drained from his face.

It wasn't possible… it _couldn't_ be possible. His team was supposed to get that mission! They _had_ to get that mission! That was where everything had started for them, it was where they learned to be a true team, it was where Sasuke had found out that he wasn't just a screw up, it was where Sakura had learned to at least tolerate him, it was where…

An even more horrifying thought struck him. Team Eight. They wouldn't be ready for something like that, not yet anyway. If it weren't for Sasuke and Kakashi, none of them would have made it through the first fight with Zabuza… they might not even have made it that far. Kurenai was a good ninja, but she was no Kakashi and no one on her team was at Sasuke's level at this point.

"Naruto, are you okay?" someone asked him and he thought he might have managed to nod dumbly as he turned to leave. He was dimly aware of Iruka, or perhaps old man Hokage calling to him as he walked away, but their voices sounded far away and his mind couldn't focus on them enough for him to understand or care what they were saying.

It was possible that Hinata, Shino, Kiba, Akamaru, and Kurenai were already dead… it might even be likely. Somewhere along the way he'd made another mistake and this was a far bigger one than simply getting Sakura tied to the training post or making Hinata mad at him… he might have gotten four people – and a dog – killed.

Naruto followed Kakashi, Sakura, and Sasuke all the way out of the Hokage Tower before his brain turned back on and he began coming up with a plan. He knew that what he ought to do was to go to Kakashi and tell him everything, but he also knew that he couldn't do that. There was no telling if Kakashi would believe him, even if Naruto showed him a jutsu or two… or ten… that he had no business knowing. The simpler explanation would be that Naruto was some sort of spy disguised as Naruto or that Kyuubi was in control of his body and by the time the full truth was realized – if it ever was – Kurenai's team would have already met their fate, assuming they weren't already dead.

What Naruto needed to do first and foremost was to figure out if the members of Team Eight were even still alive. Fortunately, he was certain that he could at least get that much before he committed himself to anything too drastic.

He waited until he walked past an alleyway and then quickly stepped inside. His fingers sped through the seals: boar, dog, bird, monkey, and sheep and then he slammed his hand down onto the ground. They were seals that his mind knew by heart after years of use added to the fact that the summoning jutsu was the first thing Jiraiya had ever really taught him.

For the first time since he was a kid, nothing happened. No seals spread out from his palm, no toads appeared with a puff of smoke… nothing.

He ran through the seals again, more carefully this time, put his hand down… and again was disappointed. It took a moment, but when the reason for his failure dawned on him, and then he felt dumb for having not realized the problem earlier. Of course he couldn't summon a toad! He hadn't signed the contract yet!

Cursing his own stupidity, he stepped back onto the street and continued following his teammates.

There were only two options left, now. Tell someone that Kurenai and her team were in trouble and face the questions that would come from that, or go and help them on his own. Naruto sighed as he made up his mind. He'd spent years wishing that he could go back to being a kid again when life was simple and easy, but now that he _was_ a kid things were more complicated than ever!

Their mission that day was the longest of any he'd ever been on and he had never been such a horrible screw up, not even on the first one they ever did during his original trip through life. By the time it was all said and done, Sasuke and Sakura were mad at him for holding them back through pure inattention and he couldn't care less. Kakashi asked him at least twice if he was okay, noting that he looked a bit distracted and more than a little ill, but Naruto barely managed to mumble an answer. All he could think about was Team Eight.

He'd promised himself that none of his precious people would end up on the Heroes' Monument, and in what felt like the blink of an eye, he'd somehow made a mistake that might have condemned four of them to that fate even earlier than in his original lifetime.

ooo

Later that night, Naruto stood on his small balcony and peered out into the darkness. He had wanted to get going as soon as possible, but after thinking about it, had decided that he would have to wait until evening to make it easier to avoid detection. The last thing he needed was to get caught before he even made it over the wall. "You understand what you have to do?" he asked, looking back into the apartment.

"Of course," his own bored voice answered. "I'm you."

"Do you think it will work?"

"I don't know, we've never tried anything like this before, but it'll probably only last until you fall asleep anyway," another copy of his voice replied from the other side of the room where he was helping himself to some instant ramen.

Naruto sighed and rubbed his eyes, he hated going without sleep. He had pumped as much chakra as possible into the clones, trying to make them last longer even when he moved a long distance away from them. Some types of clones could only move a certain distance from the original before the jutsu came undone and they vanished. He'd never had that problem with his clones, even when they traveled a mile or more away from him, but he'd never taken it as far as he was going to this time.

He stepped back inside and walked to the kitchen. "I guess it's a good thing I didn't throw this out…" he said as he opened up the refrigerator and took out a small carton of milk.

"I don't need that," the clone by the bed quickly told him as he pulled on a nightshirt and adjusted his black sleeping cap that was designed to look like a monster eating its wearer. "I'll just pretend."

"It'll be better this way and you know it," Naruto retorted.

"Then you stay and drink it and I'll go."

"You know that won't work…"

"Come on, we're a good actor. I can do it without the milk," the clone whined pitifully.

"Stop complaining," the other clone chuckled.

The first clone looked from the original Naruto to the second clone and then, seeing no sympathy for his fate, sighed and shook his head resignedly. "You're both cold hearted."

"It's not like it can kill you," Naruto reminded him.

"Fine, fine," the clone muttered darkly, turning and wandering into the bedroom. "Just hurry up and go. Maybe I'll get lucky and this won't work anyway."

Naruto nodded and headed back out onto the balcony hefting a backpack onto his shoulder and tightening the straps until it was snug. "Wish me luck."

"I wish you were unconscious so I wouldn't have to drink the milk," the clone shot back with a scowl. The second clone waved merrily and continued eating.

Naruto had chosen helping Hinata over Gaara because of how far away his fellow jinchuriki lived and how difficult it would be to vanish for the time it would take to get there and back. As it turned out, he was going to be forced to go on almost as long of a trip anyway. If there really were gods watching him, he was sure they were getting a good laugh at his expense.

He took a deep breath, gave his clones a small smile, and then disappeared into the night, hurriedly making his way towards the outer wall of the village, leaping from one roof top to the next and then over the wall and into the trees.

o

o

A/N: Since Kishimoto usually doesn't go into detail about distances or amount of time that's passed between one chapter and the next, I have no idea if Naruto's solution to his problem is actually feasible or not – but I don't think canon discounts it either. The only real clue we have is that Kakashi says a water clone cannot move far from the original's body (when fighting Zabuza), but that's a water clone and Naruto's chakra capacity, even as a child, exceeded most adults' so it's hard to say if it applies to his shadow clones. In more recent chapters (365, I think) Naruto sends out a bunch of clones searching for Sasuke because they'll be more efficient than using radios… which I would think would have a pretty wide range… again, who knows? Anyway, I don't think that it's a hugely unbelievable, so I'll just ask you to accept it for the sake of the story.

After reading numerous reviews complaining about Naruto's intelligence, I began to wonder if I was mischaracterizing him. I mean, Kishimoto says that Naruto is "simple and stupid," but maybe I'd taken it too far. Upon looking at most of what everyone was pointing to, I've decided that I think he's just fine as is… in fact, I don't really see what the big fuss is. So for anyone who is planning on sending me a review questioning Naruto's intelligence, calling him a retard, or whatever, I'd just like to point out a few things. Since this is my response to most of those reviews anyway, hopefully by giving you this now, you'll either have your points/questions answered or you'll be able to bring something new to my attention rather than just giving me the same old thing that I've already read several times. So, here are the main complaints about Naruto's intelligence level so far (excepting the first two chapters in which I think he deserves to be excused for since he thought he was under a genjutsu and didn't realize that he was dealing with reality) and my answers:

**1**. Not changing things right away. I'm not sure how this is a sign that he's being dumb. If you ask me, a stupid person would just be running around making sure that he changed as much as possible as quickly as possible. Not everything in the past had negative consequences, in fact, a lot of them worked out quite nice in the long run, so why should those things be needlessly changed (potentially calling attention to the fact that Naruto is acting very different from how he should be). This point, I think, comes from him acting the same during Kakashi's test – which worked out so horribly for his team the first time… what with them passing and all. Sorry, but I'm not going to have Naruto wanting to change everything even if it worked out okay for everyone. The saying "If it's not broke, don't fix it" is a cliché for a reason. Only an idiot tries to repair something that is already working perfectly fine.

**2**. Not knowing how to milk a cow. This was supposed to be kind of funny, but perhaps it didn't work. Sorry that his future knowledge doesn't help him with farm chores, but you'll notice that it did help him kick a 15 hundred kilogram (over 3 thousand pounds) animal's ass when the time came.

**3**. Not knowing what he did to upset Hinata. They had _ONE_ conversation people. At the time, he was too busy being excited that all of his long dead friends were alive again to notice her get upset and leave. Since then he's had a lot on his mind (saving the world, regaining control of his body, not letting people know he wasn't kid-Naruto anymore…) so I don't think that it's out of the question for him not to remember upsetting her (something he didn't even see) two weeks ago. I don't know about you, but I've done things to upset people and not realized it until it was later _explained_ to me… and I'd like to think that I'm smarter than even future Naruto.

**4**. His comments to Sakura about girls getting angry for no reason. Again, it's supposed to be funny. Naruto is distracted and says something thoughtless… well there's something Naruto has _never_ done before. Besides that, he's used to a Sakura who is a little more understanding and forgiving than this one is. Sakura punching him is for comedic effect, just as it is in the manga/anime, it's not something to be used to judge his skills or intelligence, it's just supposed to be funny… but apparently not.

**5**. Not using Shadow clones to accomplish everything he needs to do. I suppose he could be out training while his shadow clones do all of his missions, but then, is that really what he wants to do with his time? Was it Naruto's lack of training that caused Sasuke to leave the village? No. It was Sasuke's thirst for power and revenge. Naruto already knows plenty of jutsu and has all of the chakra he could ever need and now has much better control over it – meaning that he doesn't waste nearly as much – so the only things he could really train are his muscles and chakra can offset any deficiency there (as seen in the manga by ninja's jumping straight up onto tall buildings or moving from one spot to the next in the blink of an eye). He trains with his team, he doesn't really need any more training outside of that. What he needs is to build friendships not just between himself and his friends, but also between Sasuke and other people so that there's more holding him to the village than there was originally, and that requires him being there on the missions… plus, it's probably a bit nostalgic for him to do those.

**6**. Not talking with Sasuke (on screen) more. Sorry if I haven't regaled you all with the deep and meaningful conversations that have gone on between Naruto and the ever-talkative Uchiha, but I just didn't think that it needed more than the one or two conversations shown. You'll notice that it has been said that most of the conversations follow the same basic outline:

Naruto: Hey Sasuke, want to go hang out or something?

Sasuke: No.

Naruto: How about get in some extra training?

Sasuke: With you? Pft. I'd be better off on my own.

….Ah yes, stimulating and poignant to be sure. I should probably make a whole chapter just with this type of conversation over and over. Let's face it, Sasuke has about five or six years worth of practice ignoring his need for friendships, I just don't see him overcoming that in a day or two or even a week, especially not with someone that he's observed to be his inferior. Sakura at least is close to his level as far as intelligence goes, but Naruto is believed to be beneath him in every possible way. So, I apologize that Naruto hasn't beaten Sasuke into the ground (calling all sorts of attention to himself), in order to get some respect that could eventually translate into friendship, but he's chosen the more natural, and less dangerous path… seemed logical to me, but I guess not.

**7**. Not using any jutsu except what we've seen in the manga. This one is just dumb, sorry. He's on _D rank_ missions, what does he need to use other jutsu for? So he can paint a large sign over his head saying that he's not the Naruto he's supposed to be? He has used one previously unseen jutsu (to my knowledge at least) and that was just him reacting to danger that he normally doesn't find himself in.

Anyway, if those seven things make him stupid, fine. He's stupid, retarded, whatever else you want to call him. I don't think that's the case, but that might just be me. Regardless, it probably won't change a whole lot. He'll make increasingly more changes, obviously, but he's not going to go around needlessly showing off jutsu, offering insightful thoughts on deep philosophical questions concerning the make up of the universe, or whatever else it is that you want him to do. He's _not_ going to be SuperNaruto unless he has to be and that won't be for quite a while longer.

So if you still have some sort of beef with Naruto that hasn't been answered by those seven things, fine, let me hear it, just keep in mind that I'm not making you read this story, so if you don't like it, you really don't have to tell me about it, just stop reading… unless you review, I won't even know you're gone.


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

o

Hyuuga Hinata quietly entered the semi-darkened room and knelt next to the futon lying at the far side. Her eyes silently searched the sweat drenched face of the woman lying before her as her fingers brushed a strand of wet hair away from the woman's face. If she hadn't had a specific purpose for entering the room, she might have allowed herself to cry, even if her father would have frowned upon such shameful weakness.

Her sensei had always been so beautiful, so strong, and so confident, everything Hinata was not, and now all she could do was lie there, too weak and full of sedating pain medicine to even remain awake for more than a few minutes at a time.

Hinata carefully lifted the thick blanket covering the dark haired jounin and examined the Kurenai's bandages. She hadn't quite bled through them this time, thankfully, which meant that the wound was healing. Hinata slowly peeled away the bandages and then began to lightly dab a warm damp cloth against the edges of the long gash in Kurenai's side, trying not to disturb the stitches or the clotted blood anymore than was necessary to make sure everything was clean and free of infection.

Even in the dim light the wound was horrifying to see. A nasty red, swollen line that cut its way about six centimeters into Kurenai's side, passing between her tenth and eleventh ribs, and going all the way through to her back. It looked almost as though someone had tried to cut her in half… which was exactly what had happened. Crisscrossing the wound were poorly done black stitches that Hinata had been forced to hastily sew into her mentor's side to save her life.

Hinata was not a skilled medic-nin, in fact, she was little more than a novice. A more skilled medic nin might have been able to heal the jounin and leave only a faint scar – if any – behind. Because Kurenai had only Hinata to heal her, she would likely be left with a very large and very ugly scar marring her once perfect skin.

The thought that she was once again failing Kurenai made Hinata want to throw up. She had always known that she was not a good ninja, but she never thought that she would hold her teammates back this badly. Kurenai was hurt, their mission was in jeopardy, and all Hinata could do was sit in the darkened room and go over the events that had led them to this point in her mind, picking out each and every point where she had failed.

ooo

Three Days Ago

As Team Eight cautiously made their way into the small fishing village of Ginoza, Hinata couldn't help but be amazed at the changes a few days had made. They'd started off their mission under blue skies with sparrows and robins singing happily as they soared overhead while Akamaru yipped and barked playfully. It had been such a nice day that Hinata had almost been able to put her encounter with Naruto behind her and simply enjoy the peacefulness of the journey.

So nice was it, in fact, that she'd eventually decided that when she returned to Konohagakure she would find Naruto and apologize for her rudeness to him, even if it was his rudeness that had made her angry in the first place. He wasn't, after all, very socially astute, and probably hadn't even realized that he'd hurt her when he laughed about her mother's death… though it seemed that even he should have known how unkind that was. Maybe, if she was feeling particularly brave after completing the mission, she would even tell him what he had done to anger her… but probably not. The fact that he had come looking for her meant that he most likely didn't know he'd hurt her, and that was enough for her to forgive him. She'd never been good at staying mad at anyone and he was still too important to her not to eventually forgive him.

Then, on their second day of travel, things had changed. They'd been ambushed by two ninja wearing strange, clawed gloves with a large chain connecting them. The ninja had immediately gone after Kurenai who easily avoided their attack and called for her team to protect Tazuna. In the struggle, most of Team Eight handled themselves exceptionally. Kiba and Akamaru successfully knocked one of the two ninja away, and then Akamaru had urinated on the ninja while he was down. Shino's bugs surrounded and confused the other ninja, while several of them began to drain the man's chakra. All Hinata managed to do was move in front of Tazuna, but she was too frightened at that point to be much more than a shield for their client. Before it came to that, Kurenai took care of the two enemy ninja. She simply stepped in front of them, her fingers forming seals faster than Hinata could see, and then the enemies were on the ground and the fight was over.

Hinata knew what genjutsu was, she'd even had it cast on her a few times by both Kurenai and other instructors at the Academy, but it was still impressive to see two full grown ninja taken out so easily.

After their attackers were tied up, Kurenai had confronted Tazuna about the true nature of their mission and he had eventually confessed that he was more worried about ninja attacks than random robbers. He explained that his country was poor and controlled by a man named Gato who ran a shipping company known throughout the world as Gato Company. Gato controlled them through intimidation, violence, and because the only way to and from the Wave Country was by boat and Gato owned all of the large boats. Tazuna was a bridge builder and had been working for several years on a bridge that would connect the Wave Country to the mainland.

Kurenai had originally felt that they should return to Konoha and get reinforcements, but was convinced by Kiba and, too a much smaller extent, Hinata, that they should continue on. Shino chiming in that they would technically be going back on the contract, which was to escort Tazuna back to his home, seemed to settle the matter.

They had continued on, but Hinata and the rest of the group had immediately felt the change in the mission. What had once felt like a nice walk along a road that was so infrequently used that most bandits didn't bother with it, was suddenly far more serious and frightening – at least to Hinata.

Now that they were in Ginoza, things seemed to be getting even worse. Perhaps it was the fog that had rolled in from the sea, or maybe it was the fact that there seemed to be almost no citizens in the village, or that those few villagers that they saw moved as quietly as possible and didn't look up at the new comers, but they could all feel a sense of foreboding hanging over them. Tazuna quickly led them to a small dock where a friend of his was working on a net next to a long, thin, fishing boat. The bridge builder and his friend had a hushed conversation that seemed to be filled with a lot of pleading and arguing, but eventually they all climbed into the boat and headed out to sea.

ooo

Kurenai had never been a big fan of boats, so she was almost thankful for the danger hanging over them that gave her something else to worry about. It wasn't that she was _scared_ exactly, she could swim just fine and could walk on water even better, she just preferred to have her feet on solid ground rather than thinking about the fact that there was only a thin layer of wood separating her from the inky darkness of the watery depths.

She was almost thankful for the danger, but not quite. Had she been alone or with a more experienced team, she wouldn't have been concerned, but her team was far too young to be thrown into the mess they now found themselves in. She wished for the hundredth time since the two masked ninjas' attack that she had been born with less of a heart. She'd given into Kiba's complaining and pleading back in Konoha and let her team take a mission it probably wasn't totally ready for, and then had let the boy talk her into continuing with the mission once it proved even more dangerous than she'd originally thought, though Hinata's quiet voicing of her opinion that they could not abandon Tazuna-san had probably been the deciding factor that time. It was just so hard to say "no" to any of her genin, but to say it to Hinata was nearly impossible. When Shino had also spoken up in favor of continuing in his calm, logical voice, there was almost no way to deny their request.

If only it were possible for them to get through the rest of the mission without running into any more trouble or at least without running into any more powerful trouble. Her team had actually handled themselves surprisingly well in their first real combat, but if they faced anything more than a couple of overconfident chuunin, they wouldn't come out of the encounter unscathed again.

There were a few other genin teams that might be up for the challenge, but not any of the current crop of rookies. Maito Gai's team had Hyuuga Neji – who was rumored to be a genius of nearly unrivalled potential, even among the Hyuuga – and with their added experience, they could probably have handled the mission, but even Gai with all of his eccentricities would have thought twice about allowing his team to attempt a B Rank mission… if it turned into an A Rank mission, he would no doubt refuse outright. She was also certain Asuma wouldn't have allowed his team to attempt such a mission… so why was she?

Kurenai knew the answer, or at least part of the answer, and it worried her. She was letting them do it so that her team – particularly Hinata – would have something to be really proud of, a way of setting them apart from the other teams. Kakashi's team had… well, _Kakashi_, a near living legend, as well as Sasuke from _that_ clan. Asuma's group was the second incarnation of the great Ino-Shika-Cho team on top of having the son of the Third Hokage as the team leader. What did her team have? Hinata – the heir the Hyuuga's didn't want; Kiba – a good ninja from a fairly notable clan, but not one of the elites; Shino – another member of a small, though proud, clan who had as much skill and potential as anyone, but wouldn't be noticed because he was so quiet; and herself – a woman who had only just recently become a jounin and given her own team. They had nothing to be ashamed of, of course, but they didn't really stand out as being a team filled with talent. The only way her team could stand out any less (at least in terms of potential) would be if Uzumaki Naruto were on it and at least he was some one of note in the village (though not necessarily in a good way).

She hoped her actual reasoning had been more due to the fact that her team still wanted to complete the mission and because Tazuna and his village were poor and needed help… but she couldn't deny that a part of her wanted her team to show what they were made of and get a moment to shine in the spot light.

"Ugh, this mist is annoying!" Kiba groaned from the front of the boat where he was squinting in a futile attempt to see where they were going.

"We should see the bridge soon," Kaji, the boat operator informed them as he patiently worked his single oar to keep them on a path that only he could see. He was a thin, malnourished looking man with the weather-beaten skin of a lifelong fisherman. The worry and fear etched in his long face showed that he was regretting ever agreeing to help them and probably had been from the moment he nodded his head. "The Wave Country is at the base of the bridge."

The whole team turned and looked forward, straining their eyes in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the bridge.

"Byakugan," Kurenai heard Hinata whisper and then the small girl gasped in shock.

A second later the bridge appeared from within the mist, so close they could almost have reached out and touched it.

"Holy Shit! It's huge!" Kiba yelled with a laugh. "You're amazing old—"

"Shut up!" Kaji hissed in alarm. "Why the hell do you think we're hiding in the mist and not using the motor?!? We'll be in deep trouble if Gato finds us!"

Kiba slapped his hands over his mouth, the noise of the action echoing off the pillars of the bridge and sounding far louder than it should have, and nodded quickly. Shino raised an eyebrow at the man's obvious panic, but didn't comment, while Hinata continued to stare up at the immense bridge.

Gato was one of the few extremely rich men in the world who wasn't a daimyo. Kurenai had heard of him before, but only in reference to Gato Company, which – upon becoming its president and renaming it – he had turned into the continent's leading shipping company in the span of just a few short years. According to Tazuna, that company was only a front to a much larger business which specialized in drug and black-market trafficking as well as in terrorizing smaller towns and countries to bring them under his power.

Tazuna claimed that Gato came to the Wave Country about a year ago and through bribery, buy outs, and violence took over the country's shipping industry, giving him a strangle hold on all commerce coming in and out of the small island. With the completion of the bridge, however, all of that would change – which was why Tazuna's life was in danger.

A few minutes later, the boat slipped silently out of the mist and Kurenai and her team got their first view of the small dilapidated looking village situated at the edge of the island. Even from the distance Kurenai could see why Tazuna had been unable to afford a B Ranked mission. Unless they were investing their money into other areas, the villagers probably didn't have two coins to rub together, let alone enough to purchase the services of high ranking ninja.

"We'll be there soon, but Tazuna… I'm going to take the route that has the most vegetation," Kaji whispered. "It doesn't look like we've been detected yet, but I don't want to take any chances."

"That's a super good idea," Tazuna smiled, the sight of his bridge warming his heart and leaving him feeling as though the hard part of the trip was already over.

Kaji steered the boat through a narrow tunnel and then into an area of water that was surrounded by trees. A few minutes later, they pulled up to a rickety dock and disembarked.

"This is it for me," Kaji told them as he pulled his oar from the water, daring to bring his voice to just above a whisper, but only just. "Good bye and good luck."

"Yeah," Tazuna replied, "Super thanks."

Kaji did not respond. He quickly stored the oar, gave the pull-crank a quick tug to start the engine, and then sped away from the village as fast as possible. Kurenai's team and Tazuna watched him go for a moment and then the old man turned to the teens and their leader and grinned cheerfully.

"Okay! Get me home safely," he ordered as though it would be as simple as walking down the path.

Kurenai could only hope that things ended up going that smoothly, but if a man with Gato's resources wanted Tazuna dead, he wouldn't stop with just sending a few chuunin after him. "Kiba, you and Akamaru are up front, Hinata, take the back, Shino you and I are in the middle with Tazuna." Her red eyes glanced around quickly and she could feel her pulse quickening. She had a bad feeling about all of this. "Let's hurry."

They only made it a short ways before Akamaru gave a bark and dove into the bushes.

"What happened?" Kurenai asked as Kiba stared in surprise at the spot his companion had vanished into.

"I don't know," Kiba replied. "He just said he smelled something and took off."

The young ninja carefully stepped over to the bushes and pulled them apart to reveal the white puppy pinning a white snow rabbit to the ground with his mouth around its neck. The rabbit did not dare to struggle, hoping that the puppy would find a stationary object less appetizing than one that wiggled in his mouth. Every second or two, Akamaru would give a muffled little growl and shake his head back and forth, trying to illicit a reaction from his prey.

"Ah, Akamaru, let it go," Kiba moaned. "I'll feed you when we get to the old man's house. Besides, that thing looks way too skinny to be any good anyway."

Akamaru whined mournfully as he opened his mouth and released the white rabbit, which instantly bolted for a small bush and vanished.

"I don't care what you thought you smelled, it was just a rabbit," Kiba sighed, but despite his words, he gave a long, thoughtful look at the spot the rabbit had disappeared. "Hey, uh, Tazuna-san," he asked as he and Akamaru once again took point and the group began to walk again, "does it snow here often?"

"In the winter it gets super cold and snows, but we're a long ways away from that time of year," the bridge builder replied with a shrug.

"Do people keep rabbits for pets or something?"

"Kid, if someone is lucky enough to catch a rabbit, they eat it. There's not enough money for all the people to eat, they aren't going to waste any on feeding a rabbit."

"Then why was that rabbit still white?" Kiba asked as they rounded a corner and a large lake came into view.

"Should it be a different color?" Tazuna asked in confusion. "I'm interested in bridges, not rodents."

"It's late spring, a snow rabbit should have turned brown by now," Kiba replied.

Kurenai had only been loosely paying attention to the conversation up until the point, but something about Kiba's words got her attention and had her on guard. "Hinata," she said in a calm voice that belied her inner concern, "activate your Byakugan and take a look around for me."

Hinata started to do as she was asked, but before she could activate her kekkei genkai, Kurenai heard something moving through the air and leaped at the Hyuuga, tackling her to the ground as she called out, "Everyone get down!"

Shino reacted instantly, grabbing Tazuna by his backpack and jerking him to the ground as he also dropped. Kiba had been too caught up in the mystery of the rabbit and reacted slowly, but was saved by Akamaru diving at his knees and knocking him to the ground as a large object passed overhead and thudded against a nearby tree trunk.

When the danger was passed, Kurenai looked up and saw a tall, thin man standing on the handle of the largest zanbato she had ever seen. The blade was at least one hundred and forty centimeters long and close to sixty centimeters wide and was buried over half way into the tree trunk it had collided with. It must have taken an incredible amount of strength just to lift it, let alone throw it.

The man wore grey-blue pinstriped pants and camouflage arm coverings, but no shirt so they could see the grayish colored skin of his back. His hitai-ate sat haphazardly on the side of his head and a dark blue colored strap – presumably for his sword – came up from his pants and wrapped around his neck. His mouth, nose and the lower half of his head were covered by white bandages and a shock of short, brown hair covered his head. He turned slightly and Kurenai caught a glimpse of a slash through the mist symbol of Kirigakure.

"You're the ones who defeated the Demon Brothers?" the man asked incredulously, "A couple of brats and a little woman?"

Kurenai rose to her feet, glancing around quickly to make sure that no one on her team was injured. "Who are you?" she asked the man.

He smirked and turned fully to look at her, squatting down on his sword so that he could be ready to move in an instant. "That's my line."

"Yuhi Kurenai of Konoha."

"Hn, never heard of you. You're not in my bingo book," his eyes shifted away from her dismissively and locked onto Tazuna. "I'm Momochi Zabuza. I'm here for the geezer."

Kiba jumped to his feet and glared at Zabuza. "Like hell you're laying one finger on old man Tazuna!" he yelled defiantly as Akamaru barked in agreement.

"Is that a hitai-ate on your head boy?" Zabuzu asked, his eyes never leaving Tazuna. "You think that makes you a ninja? You don't know what a real ninja is!"

"Protect Tazuna-san!" Kurenai ordered as she placed herself between Zabuza and Tazuna, her team quickly obeyed, forming a tight triangle around the bridge builder.

Her heart was pounding in her ears and she could feel sweat trickling down the side of her face. She didn't know much about him, but she'd heard of Momochi Zabuza, and that was enough to scare her. Being a fairly new jounin, Kurenai had only recently received a bingo book of her own that listed and had information on all of the dangerous or noteworthy ninja from other villages so that a jounin or ANBU member would know what they were up against. She didn't remember reading about Momochi Zabuza, however, which meant that she had heard his name elsewhere and that meant that he was either a very dangerous individual or had done something big enough to be discussed by other ninja not involved in whatever he'd done… which basically came back to him being extremely dangerous. "No matter what happens," she ordered, her red eyes trained on the tall ninja in the tree, "protect Tazuna-san and stay out of this fight."

"B-but Kurenai-sensei…" Hinata started to object.

"No!" Kurenai yelled over her shoulder, her voice tight with fear that she wished she wasn't showing. "Stay back. If you see a chance to make a run for it, you take Tazuna and get as far away from here as you can. This one is totally different than those other guys were."

Zabuza grinned through his wrapping, "You have no idea how right you are little girl." With deliberate ease he placed one hand on the handle of the sword he was still standing on and then gave the tree a small kick, pulling his sword free and propelling himself away from the tree and out over the lake.

Team Eight turned their heads towards the water and quickly located him again; it was sort of hard to miss the tall man with the enormous sword strapped to his back standing on the water as if it were stone.

Zabuza brought one hand in front of his mouth, two fingers pointing at the sky and then raised his other hand, once again extending two fingers.

For a moment Kurenai thought that his form was fading, as if he were performing some sort of invisibility jutsu, but then she realized that it was worse than that. Zabuza's jutsu was forcing a large amount of chakra into the water, causing it to evaporate and form what was essentially a small cloud around him.

Zabuza grinned at them one last time and then said, "Kirigakure no Jutsu."

He vanished into the mist that had surrounded him and then it began to spread outward until they too were enveloped in it.

"What the hell is he?" Kiba asked nervously his eye shifting back and forth in a futile effort to see through the mist that had surrounded them.

"A missing-nin from Kirigakure," Kurenai replied stepping a little farther into the mist, her eyes traveling back and forth as she searched for signs of movement in the vapor. "I don't know exactly who he is, but I think I've heard of him… and that's a very bad thing."

The three genin exchanged glances and Tazuna took a small step backwards.

"He'll probably come after me first," Kurenai continued, trying to ignore their fear as well as her own. "If I survive the first attack, you need to make a break for it while I keep him busy."

"I-If?" Hinata asked her breathing suddenly becoming short quick gasps as she struggled not to give into her growing panic.

Kurenai would have loved to have comforted the girl, but at the moment, she wasn't sure how and certainly couldn't spare a moment's attention. "I don't know what sort of techniques he likes to use and I don't know how strong he is. If he's as strong as I fear, then yes, _if_." She took another step forward and the mist seemed to swell up around them until she vanished from sight.

"Kurenai-sensei!" Hinata called out in alarm.

"She's fine," Shino told her in a calm, but strange sounding voice. His clan prided themselves on their emotional detachment and their steadfast adherence to logic, but that did not mean that they were immune to fear.

"Eh, this mist is getting thicker," Kiba groaned, his hand tightening on the handle of his kunai.

"The Wave Country is surrounded by the ocean, so fog isn't uncommon," Tazuna whispered as the mist continued to thicken, "but I've never seen anything as super thick as this."

"It's hard to smell anything but dirty water," Kiba complained as he squinted his eyes, trying to force some sort of shape to emerge from the cloud in front of him.

For a moment the three genin continued to look around, trying not to shake with fear, and then Shino whispered, "Hinata, use your Byakugan."

Hinata gave a sharp nod, but before she could do as she was told, a terrifying voice echoed from within the fog. "Eight vital points..."

Kiba swallowed hard and Akamaru whimpered and stepped back between his friend's legs.

"The larynx, spine, lungs, heart, kidney, jugular vein, collar bone, and liver… which one should I go after first?"

And then something even thicker and more frightening than fog descended upon the group, a blood lust so powerful it made the three genin want to throw up. Kiba's head whipped back and forth nervously as his hands began to shake with fear. Shino didn't show much in terms of outward signs of fear, but it gripped him nonetheless, freezing him in his spot so that he couldn't have even lifted a finger if he dared.

Hinata knew her teammates were afraid, but she was sure that it was hitting her the hardest. She'd felt the bile rise all the way to the top of her throat before managing to swallow it back down. And even though she managed to keep her stomachs contents where they belonged for the moment, her knees grew weak and she felt herself starting to fall to the ground. It was like something was squeezing her insides, threatening to kill her if she even moved a muscle and yet sapping her strength and forcing her to her knees. She just wanted it to end, even if she died, even if she had to take her own life. So long as the terror, the squeezing, stopped, she didn't care how it ended.

"Hinata," Kurenai's reassuring voice suddenly called to her as the dark haired jounin stepped out of the mist. "Hinata, you're okay, I'll keep you safe, I promise. Use your Byakugan."

Hinata nodded weakly, forming the seal and then blinking as the veins around her eyes stretched and the world changed. The mist faded considerably for her, though the chakra in the air allowed some of it to remain, and the world became much clearer. She could see Tazuna behind and to her left, with Kiba just beyond him and Akamaru on the ground, she could see Kurenai in front of her and Shino to her immediate left, but most importantly, she could see a man patiently approaching them from straight ahead, just behind Kurenai.

"Kurenai-sensei!" Hinata called out as the man's sword drew back for a fatal strike.

Kurenai reacted instantly, spinning on her heel as her hand dipped into her kunai holster and firing the weapon the second it was out.

Hinata's white eyes widened as the man was struck in the chest and then seemed to melt as though he were made of water. She reported this to Kurenai who nodded and told her to keep looking as she made eye contact with Shino and gave him a small hand signal. Shino never gave any sign that he'd seen the movement, but he lowered one arm and opened his hand as something fell from his sleeve.

"Remember what I said," Kurenai told them in a stern voice. "The moment the fight really starts, you're getting out of here."

Hinata didn't reply, not trusting her voice, but she gave a small nod as she turned her head to make sure she was watching behind them as well. All Hyuuga had a blind spot in their Byakugan's field of vision, they could see about 355 degrees around them, but not the full 360. Her father was said to have nearly 359 degrees and her sister was estimated at a little more than 357. Hinata had overheard someone say that Neji could see even more than her father, but no one knew if that was true or simply a rumor started by Branch members wanting something to hold over the Main house.

Hinata wasn't sure what her field of vision was, but it from the way the examiners shook their heads, it must not have been very good and on top of that she was certain that she couldn't see nearly as far as many other Hyuuga could. It was yet another thing for her father to be disappointed in, but for the moment it didn't matter. So long as she kept turning her head, she could see just as far around as anyone else and no enemy was going to attack from farther away than she could see... at least not today.

"Above!" she called out suddenly as she finally managed to catch sight of their attacker.

Kiba, Shino, and Kurenai sent kunai up at the man as he dropped on them. Kurenai's hit his chest and face, while Kiba and Shino only managed to strike his arms and stomach, but it was more than enough. The man turned to water once again, raining down upon the startled group.

"This is super annoying!" Tazuna complained wiping water from his face.

"Shut up," Kiba growled, "or would you rather we just let him kill you?"

Tazuna promptly closed his mouth.

"Can you see him now Hinata?" Kurenai asked, ignoring the two.

"N-no, I'm sorry, Kurenai-sensei."

"Keep looking, he's here somewhere."

Hinata caught sight of some chakra coils moving to her right and turned to get a better look at them, but as she did she saw another set moving in from behind, and then another to the left of the first.

"T-there's three of him…" she whispered urgently, pointing in their direction.

"Damn water clones," Kurenai muttered and then said, "Don't stop looking. Water clones take a lot of chakra, he can't keep making them forever."

It was becoming obvious to Kurenai that they were being toyed with. Zabuza was probably stronger than she was, certainly he had all of the advantage in the mist, and on top of it all, he was fast. She couldn't say for certain, but if she had to guess, she would have figured him to be a former ANBU or whatever the Hidden Mist equivalent was.

The only things her team had going for them was his overconfidence, Hinata's Byakugan, and the fact that he – or at least his clones – couldn't always see kunai coming at them through the mist. Without even one of those three, they would already be dead.

How fortunate was it that her team had been given this mission? Of all the genin teams out there, only two currently had Hyuuga on them. Any other team would have been killed off already; even a chuunin team might not have stood much chance. Sadly, Kurenai wasn't sure how much of a chance they stood, even with Hinata to warn them of attacks. Zabuza was beginning to use more water clones, which would both confuse Hinata and force them to use up their kunai that much faster.

"How's it going, Shino?" she asked tensely.

"They are struggling to locate their target," he replied. "The water limits their tracking capabilities… but they will eventually succeed."

"Tell them to hurry the hell up," Kiba growled.

"They already understand the need for haste."

"Left!"

Three kunai shot through the mist to the north and the sound of sloshing water greeted their ears a second later.

"Ha ha ha," Zabuza's voice called out to them. "Are you ready for this to be over? Or would you like to play ninja a little longer?"

"Come on out and fight like a man!" Kiba yelled back. "Quit messing around in this sissy mist!"

"You don't like it?" Zabuza replied. "It's my home village's signature jutsu… but perhaps you're right. Perhaps it is time to stop playing around and show you why my village is also called the 'Blood Mist Village.'"

Hinata's eyes had been trying to keep track of the two Zabuzas that were currently circling them when suddenly she lost track of one. "Kurenai-sen—" was all she managed to get out before Zabuza appeared right in the middle of their cluster.

Kurenai was already moving when Hinata began her warning, a desperate plan forming in her mind. She knew she had to put it into motion before she could think of how foolish it was. In one fluid move, she grabbed Hinata by her jacket and pulled, simultaneously pushing Tazuna and kicking at Shino and Kiba, sending all four of them flying away from the danger, but leaving herself in a bad position.

Zabuza sneered through his mask as he brought his sword around, passing clean through her.

And then his eyes widened in surprise as she faded like the mist, not even leaving a drop of blood behind. The ground shifted at his feet and he looked down in time to see a small plant push through and then grow lager as its vines entangled him.

"The only blood we're going to see is yours," Kurenai whispered as a leaf of the plant opened and the upper half her body appeared, a kunai already drawn.

"Genjutsu?" Zabuza gasped as Kurenai's weapon streaked towards his heart.

The weapon pierced his body and his mouth fell open in surprise. Kurenai's victorious grin lasted only for a second as Zabuza turned to water and splashed down on the ground. She spun quickly, bringing her kunai up to a blocking position, but it was already too late.

"It's over," Zabuza hissed in her ear as his blade dug into her side.

Kurenai's eyes bulged as the wave of pain washed over her, but she didn't fall. Her left hand held a kunai that was partially blocking the missing nin's attack, just enough to keep herself from suffering a mortal wound, but only just. Now that she was feeling the fruits of her labor, she decided that it had been a stupid plan, after all, but there was still a chance that would work and save the lives of her genin… she would gladly accept any amount of pain for such a reward.

She opened her mouth to reply, but all the came out was a small stream of blood and an unpleasant cough.

Zabuza's eyes lit up as the blood from her wound and from her mouth landed on his pants and chest. "I'm disappointed," he whispered to her as he pushed harder on his sword, driving the blade deeper into her side as well as beginning to cut through the edge of her kunai. "I thought Leaf-nin were better than this."

Kurenai's right hand came across her body and latched onto the handle of his sword, trying to keep him from slicing her in half. "Shino?" she managed to croak.

"A moment longer and it will be done," came the reply from the mist where the Aburame boy had been kicked to.

"I don't… have a moment," Kurenai groaned as Zabuza pressed harder, proving that both her hand and her kunai would not be able to hold him off for long.

Suddenly, from the opposite direction as Shino's voice, a growl was heard as a large shape charged at Zabuza from within the mist.

The ninja saw Kiba coming, however, and with a contemptuous snort he kicked him away savagely. "Idiot, did you think I'd forgotten where you were?" he asked as Kiba vanished once again into the mist landing with a loud thud. He turned his attention back to Kurenai and smiled, "Good bye, little gir—Ahhh!"

A second Kiba had appeared, this one holding a kunai in either hand which he drove into Zabuza's shoulder and side as he landed on the man's back. H growled savagely as he twisted the two knives hard. "Who's the idiot now?" Kiba taunted with a fanged grin. "This is for kicking my dog."

Zabuza seemed momentarily stunned, but then he took one hand off the handle of his sword, reached back, pulled Kiba off of his back and threw him towards the lake. "You're dying next," he promised as he turned back to Kurenai, "and you're dying right now."

He once again went to push the blade into her, this time not planning on stopping until he was watching her innards slop onto the muddy ground, but suddenly found himself feeling dizzy and weak. "Wha…"

Kurenai looked up at him and smiled as she began to push the sword out of her side. "You look like… you're r-running low on… chakra," she whispered through the pain. "In the next life, make s-sure your enemy doesn't… _let_ you hit her to bring you out… of hiding!"

He gave her a confused look, staring right into her eyes, and then she faded away as a nearby tree reached out with its branches and grabbed hold of him. Its trunk opened up and the branches began to pull him inside. No matter how hard he struggled he couldn't find the strength to break free from its grasp and soon the trunk was closing in around him. His sword was ripped from his hand and then the darkness swallowed him up.

Kurenai pushed until at last the sword was removed from her side and then she collapsed to the ground, hitting just a moment after Zabuza. Every breath she took was agony and her vision swam before her eyes as warm blood pooled beneath her. The mist around them quickly vanished with Zabuza out of commission, but Kurenai couldn't see any better than she had when completely surrounded by it.

"H-Hinata… Kiba… Shino…" she called out weakly.

"Kurenai-sensei!" Hinata yelled as she and her teammates ran towards their fallen teacher. To Kurenai it sounded as if the Hyuuga was speaking from very far away through a tunnel.

Hinata stripped out of her jacket and quickly cut the sleeves off of it before rolling it and placing it under Kurenai's head. One sleeve was folded once and then pressed against the gaping wound in the woman's side as Hinata began to stutter out nervous instructions to Kiba to hold the makeshift bandage in place with as much pressure as possible until she could get something more permanent.

"Shi... Shino," Kurenai whispered weakly as the world began to fade to black.

"Save your breath, sensei," Shino replied. "You were victorious, just concentrate on surviving now."

She gave a tiny shake of her head. "No," she whispered, "he… if I lose con… consciousness or…" she took a deep, painful breath, and Kiba gasped as blood began to soak all the way through the thick, folded sleeve. "…the genjutsu won't hold him… you have to f-finish him…"

Shino nodded and picked up the kunai Kurenai had used to block the sword as he rose to his feet and walked to the fallen Mist ninja. His kikaichu bugs, which were still draining Zabuza's chakra, received his command to leave the man and quickly made their way up his sleeves and into his body to rest and digest their meal. His glasses reflected in the sunlight as he raised the blade over his head and began to bring it down towards the man's throat.

Just before he got there, however, two senbon whistled through the air and pierced Zabuza's throat. Instantly on guard, Shino spun to face the potential enemy and found himself looking at a rather small person – the gender was impossible to guess – standing in a tree, wearing a peculiar mask and a loose fitting outfit that seemed out of place on a ninja.

"Thank you," the masked ninja said in a soft voice, "we've been looking for him for a long time."

"Who are you?" Shino asked.

"I am a Hunter-nin from Kirigakure, Zabuza-san's home village. I've been after him for many months now, but have never gotten the chance to kill him until today."

The small ninja vanished in a swirl of leaves and appeared next to Shino to whom he – or she – bowed. Shino nodded in reply and knelt next to Zabuza, feeling for a pulse but finding none.

"He is dead," Shino reported loudly enough for Kiba, Hinata, and Tazuna to hear.

The Hunter-nin turned and looked at the spot where Kurenai was lying. "Your companion is hurt, do you need assistance? I am not very good at healing, but I will help if I can, after all, it is thanks to you that I am able to return to my home again."

"Hinata?" Shino asked.

Hinata's Byakugan eyes scanned her teacher for a moment before she replied. "I-I think I'll have Kurenai-sensei s-stable in a moment… but we need to get her some place warm and dry, q-quickly."

The Hunter-nin bowed once again. "Very well, again you have my thanks. Now if you will excuse me, this body carries many secrets, I must dispose of it." The ninja threw Zabuza's limp arm over his shoulder and then said, "Farewell," and vanished in another swirl of leaves.

"This day just gets weirder and weirder," Kiba muttered from Kurenai's side.

Shino looked thoughtfully at the spot where the Hunter-nin and Zabuza's body had vanished and then said, "Kiba, help me build Kurenai-sensei a stretcher. We need to make haste to Tazuna-san's home."

A short while later, Team Eight limped into the village and apparent safety.

When they arrived at Tazuna's house, they were greeted by his daughter who immediately helped them get Kurenai inside and set up a futon for her to lay on while she recovered. Medicine was brought to help fight infection, bandages were set out, and food was prepared for those who were able to eat. Hinata had ignored her hunger while she quickly worked to save her teacher's life, stitching the wound together as neatly as her trembling hands would allow. Later, when it was apparent that all they could do was wait and see if Kurenai would make it, she still could not bring herself to eat. The rest of that day and through the night she waited by Kurenai's side, changing bandages, dabbing away sweat and apologizing quietly for not seeing the attack sooner and for being so useless.

If Kurenai heard her or even cared, she gave no sign of it.

o

o

A/N: Well, there was no Naruto in this chapter, I wonder if I'll still get reviews asking why he's such an idiot… maybe I'll just hear about Kurenai being stupid now.

Kirigakure no Jutsu Hidden Mist Technique, most of us have seen it by this point. Zabuza makes mist, kills people… so exciting!


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

o

It didn't take Naruto long to get a safe distance away from the village and then cut over to the road. Once there he dropped to the ground and took off at top speed towards the Wave Country. He was exceedingly thankful that there was only one quick route from Konoha to Tazuna's village, it made his search infinitely easier. Of course, it also helped the bad guys get the drop on his team the first time around, so there were some draw backs, but for the moment he was glad for it.

Last time it had taken them a few days to get there, but they had been walking at the time and he was much faster now – though still not as fast as he'd been before he'd been turned back into a child, but that would come as his body grew and muscles developed. As near as he could figure, Team Eight had left almost a week ago (assuming they'd left that same day he saw them in front of the tower), that meant that they should have already reached the Wave Country, and with it, Zabuza and Haku. Naruto knew that there was a good chance that his friends were already dead, but until he saw it with his own eyes, he wouldn't accept it.

And if he did see it with his own eyes, Zabuza and Haku would come to greatly regret it.

The path to the Wave Country was hardly a straight one. It worked its way around meandering creeks, along small rivers, and occasionally was diverted to make passage over a particularly hilly area a little easier. Naruto didn't follow it much. He knew roughly where the island was and headed in that direction, only using the path when it happened to work its way near him and even then only using it long enough to check that Team Eight had actually made it that far before returning to the shorter path through the trees.

He had never been a great tracker. Kakashi had once told him that it was because he was always in too much of a hurry to stop and look for the finer details needed to track anything smaller than a one ton bear. It was distinctly possible that if any other team had gotten the mission, he would have simply had to go to the Wave Country to see if they had survived the trip. Team Eight, however, was unique in that they not only had their four human members but also had Akamaru with them.

The little puppy probably spent three-quarters of his time in Kiba's jacket or on his head, but he had to get down occasionally if for no other reason than to relieve himself somewhere other than on Kiba's head. A small pile of dog droppings, usually covered by a bit of dirt or grass – which did little to hide the scent, but made it easier to accidentally step in Naruto discovered – or a few puppy paw prints were all he needed to see to assure himself that they'd reached that far on the trail so that he could return to the trees above and race along through the forest, quickly (he hoped) gaining on his future friends.

ooo

Naruto's clone waited until the last possible minute before drinking the disgusting milk, praying that Naruto would either fall asleep or that there was some sort of a distance limit to the jutsu that would cause him to vanish before the task fell to him. His only solace was the fact that as soon as he vanished, Naruto would instantly know about the foul taste as if he'd drunk it himself.

"Bottoms up," the clone told him with a grin that would have earned him a punch in the face were it not for the fact that they had to remain whole for as long as possible.

"Shut up," the first clone groaned as he poured the milk into a cup and tried to fish out as many white chunks as he could. The sour smell made his eyes water and his nose wrinkle even before he brought the semi-liquid up to his mouth. The clone closed his eyes, pinched his nose shut and took two deep breaths, preparing himself for what was too come. Then he tipped back his head and poured the milk straight down his throat, trying to taste as little of it as possible. He gagged the moment the last of it tumbled down his throat, but managed to keep it down. "Ugh, I'm going to be sick."

"That's the idea," the second clone replied with a sympathetic smile. "Just hurry to the Tower, show Kakashi-sensei how sick you are, and then come back. What could be easier?"

"You drinking the milk and me staying here and eating our ramen," the first pointed out, clutching his stomach as it rumbled unpleasantly while the milk made its way down.

"Yeah, well, too late for that. Hurry up."

The first clone groaned and stumbled out the door, his stomach heaving but the determination to secure a day or two of excused absences for Naruto by keeping the acidic bile where it belonged until his mission was complete.

Several minutes later he was standing with his team while the Third read the list of possible missions for them to take. It was just more of the same boring stuff that he – or at least Naruto – had been doing since he became a genin… again. There was babysitting to be done, weeds to be pulled, roofs to be fixed, pets to be found… the usual stuff. The clone was almost happy that he wouldn't have to do any of it.

"Naruto, are you alright?" Iruka asked from his seat next to the Hokage. "You're looking a bit green."

The Naruto clone opened his mouth to reply, but quickly closed it again as bile made a rush at the sudden opening. His cheeks puffed out comically as the milk found its retreat once again cut off, and then swallowed hard, forcing it back into his stomach for a little longer. He gave his head a small shake and regretted it instantly as a new wave of nausea hit him.

Sakura and Sasuke edged away from the clearly ill blond, not wanting anything to do with whatever was about to happen to him.

"Why don't you take the day off and go see a doctor, Naruto?" Kakashi asked.

The clone managed another shake of his head, but was beginning to wonder if it wouldn't be better just to stab himself in the leg so his ordeal would end. He strongly suspected that when he finally did puke, it would be enough to release him anyway.

"Alright, well, just go home then," the silver haired jounin sighed. "I think the mission will be easier without you while you're in that condition."

The clone nodded thankfully and fled the building. He made it half way home before the nausea became too much for him and he was forced to duck into an alleyway and try to empty the contents of his stomach onto the ground.

Only a faint whiff of smoke ever came out of the alley and the two remaining Narutos in the world cringed simultaneously as they were treated to the memories of their companion's unpleasant morning.

ooo

Near the middle of Wave Country a tall structure hung from the trees shaped like a gigantic beehive. It had been built around a thick tree trunk and was suspended in the air by numerous ropes tied to the surrounding trees, with a small wooden walkway winding its way up into its bowels. A house or large building would have been easier to build, easier to maintain, and easier to get in and out of, but Gato did not want easy, he wanted impressive and his fortress was definitely that.

Gato had always been small and weak with poor eye sight that required glasses and frizzy hair that stuck out comically. As a child he'd been ridiculed for his appearance and weakness both by his father and by the children of the small village he lived in.

Though his appearance had changed little over the years, no one laughed at Gato now.

Because he had no friends and because he feared the bullies that would pounce on him should he venture outside, he had nothing to do but study and learn. The subject didn't matter, only the learning. He read every book in his family's small home and then he began begging his mother to borrow books from the surrounding families so that he could learn what they held as well.

His intelligence brought him praise from his teachers as he answered their questions with ease and often came to them looking for additional and more advanced school work so that he might keep on learning, but the other students hated him for it. A small child was amusing to push around for a few giggles from time to time, but a small child who made you look foolish in front of your peers needed to be destroyed.

It was there, on the playground staring down at the mud that was red with his blood, that Gato learned one of the two most valuable pieces of information he would ever come across. The strong always picked on the weak and no amount of intelligence or fact memorizing would ever change that.

The second would come just a few months later when his father took his family on a small business trip to a nearby city. They traveled with a caravan of other families making the same trip. Because of the amount of people traveling and the large number of bandit attacks that occurred in those days before the Great Ninja War, the caravan pooled its money and purchased the services of a small team of ninja. Along the way, a large group of bandits did attack and every last one of them was slaughtered by the caravan's ninja guards.

As he watched a lone ninja defeat two physically imposing men in the blink of an eye without even seeming to move from the spot where he stood, Gato learned of his most important lessons: money could buy protection… and power.

From that day on, he worked hard doing small jobs where his weak muscles didn't matter and where his sharp mind could bring him more money. Sometimes he was a tutor, other times a store clerk, and eventually an accountant in a small shipping company. Along the way he used what money he could spare to purchase helpers who would either protect him or take out someone who stood in his way. Bullies from his youth were shown what he had gone through and those few who survived regretted their treatment of him, or so he liked to think.

He made sure that any violence was never traceable back to him, keeping his hands clean as he earned, bought, and bullied his way up the chain of command until he sat at the very top, richer and more powerful than ever.

Under his leadership the small shipping company – which was renamed 'Gato Company' – began to expand, swallowing up smaller companies, driving competitors out of business, and always _strangely_ immune to the violence that sometimes shook the shipping yards. Soon Gato and his company were the primary shipping company for much of the continent. He had ships in every harbor, filled with cargo bound elsewhere, and charging a hefty price to carry it.

It was around this time that he began to stick his fingers into other pots. One small, under the table, deal to carry a few boxes of illegal goods earned him such a large profit that soon almost half of his cargo was labeled as something it was not. Drugs, weapons, even a few slaves were all moved around the coast by his ships and he never looked back.

It was about this time that he began setting his sights on other ventures. Being a rich entrepreneur was all fine and good, but he still would never be the biggest kid on the block until he actually _owned_ a block. He wanted to be like a daimyo, in power if not in name. And to be a daimyo, one had to have a country.

Taking over a large country would have been impossible, no matter how much his company grew, but a smaller country, one without a ninja village to protect it was another matter altogether. And so, little 'Gato-chan' who had been mocked, beaten, and made to eat mud as a child set his sights upon the Wave Country.

Taking over the small island's shipping industry was simple and with that in his power, not even the current daimyo – who Gato planed to have replaced soon – could stand against him. He practically owned the country. He controlled the villages, he controlled the taxes, he even had the power to act as law – his laws, of course – enforcement. The only thing that stood between him and total control was a stupid old man and the bridge he was building.

When Tazuna first began to build his bridge, it was all a big joke to Gato, but as the bridge grew closer and closer to the mainland, the joke quickly became far less funny. Tazuna was from a village that was already supposed to have been subdued back when he first started taking over. It had only taken one public execution for to put the simple fishers in their places, but just as one death could bring the town under his control, one man could take everything away from him. With the bridge completed, his shipping company would not be as needed, that would force his prices down and with it his profits and power over the daimyo.

He had tried to break Tazuna's spirit, sending men after any villagers who worked on the bridge, but the old man kept preaching about the importance of the bridge and many continued to help him build it. Soon it became obvious that Tazuna needed to be eliminated, but doing so would require a more overt form of violence than Gato normally liked to use if he could help it. When he learned that Tazuna had gone to Konohagakure to purchase some ninja guards to protect him, Gato's hand was forced.

He found the strongest missing nin around, Momochi Zabuza, the Devil of the Hidden Mist. Zabuza had asked for an outrageous amount of money to kill the old man, but Gato had agreed, not really planning on paying anyway for that was another lesson he'd learned: you can always hire more criminals when you get rid of the ones currently working for you. Zabuza brought with him a few men, the so-called 'Demon Brothers' as well as a strange little boy with delicate features named Haku. The four of them used Gato's own Wave Country headquarters as their own, and now Gato was going there to see for himself the news that had been reported to him a few days ago.

Zabuza had been defeated and was lying in bed, unable to fight.

As he walked up the winding ramp, his designer shoes stepping gently on the finely cut wood, his exquisitely tailored suit softly swishing whenever he took a step, and his two samurai bodyguards keeping pace with him, Gato could feel his irritation growing. He wasn't planning on paying the full amount to Zabuza, but the ninja and his companions still ate and used up resources and resources cost money. If Gato was paying money in any form, he expected results. He was not running a charity.

"So," he said as he entered Zabuza's room without knocking, "even you have come back defeated." He put his hands in the pockets of his expensive suit pants and shook his head in disappointment, "It looks like the Hidden Mist's ninja are pretty pathetic."

Zabuza was lying on his back under thick covers, his mouth, neck, and shoulders bandaged and his eyes staring up at the ceiling.

"You can't even avenge your own men?" Gato pressed, stepping closer to the prone form of his employee. "And you call yourself a devil? Don't make me laugh."

Haku was seated on a stool next to the bed, his long, black hair pulled back in a feminine bun. The boy's eyes turned towards Gato and radiated hatred. Zabuza didn't even bother looking away from the ceiling.

When the missing nin didn't reply, Gato's two bodyguards, Zori and Waraji, stepped forward, their thumps pressing against the crossguards of their katana, readying the blades to be pulled from their sheaths at a moments notice. They were impressively intimidating figures – which was why Gato had hired them. Zori's hair was longer and he looked for all the world like just some punk kid in his baggy shirt and long shorts, but he was tall and the tattoos around his eyes made them look even more dangerous than they normally would have. Waraji wore nothing but a wrap around his waist and an eye patch, but he was a powerful looking man and the swirling tattoos that wound their way along his upper body only added to that very accurate impression.

Haku's hands flexed, but the boy did not move from the stool. All of his attention, however, was now on the three men rather than his master.

Gato grinned and stepped forward confidently. "Hold on for a second," he ordered as he straightened his dark sunglasses. He stepped right up to the bed, ignoring Haku and looked down at Zabuza. "Hey," he whispered mockingly, "there's no need to stay quiet." He raised a hand and reached for the bandages around the ninja's mouth. "Maybe you'll talk if we—"

His comment was cut off by a grip of iron wrapping around his forearm. Haku rose to his feet, never releasing his master's employer. "You will not touch Zabuza-sama with your dirty hands!" he hissed in a voice that carried none of the normal soft gentleness that had led Gato to believe that Haku was actually female the first time he met him.

Gato tried to pull away, but the boy was shockingly strong. "Rele—"

Haku twisted his wrist sharply to the side and there was a loud crack as Gato's arm broke.

Waraji and Zori reacted instantly, their hands instinctively moving to draw their swords.

For a single breath, no one said or seemed to do anything. And then the two samurai realized that they had pulled nothing but air from their sheaths and that Haku was now standing between them, a sword in either hand, the blades lightly pressing against their throats.

"You shouldn't do that," he growled, a strange sound to hear coming from his pretty lips, "I'm pissed off enough as it is!"

Gato held his arm gingerly and looked over his shoulder at the boy before turning back to Zabuza who had continued to stare up at the ceiling throughout the entire confrontation. "One more time!" the business man yelled, his composure leaving him in his fright over having lost control of the encounter. "If you fail me one more time you won't be welcome here anymore. Remember that!" With as much dignity as he could muster he scurried back to his bodyguards as their swords were returned to their sheaths for them by Haku. The three men hastily retreated from the room, slamming the door behind them.

When they were gone, Haku relaxed, his body sliding back into its natural, peaceful posture. He turned back to his master and quietly sat down on the stool, looking as though nothing had happened to disturb his observing of Zabuza.

"You didn't have to do that," Zabuza muttered. He lifted his right hand, refusing to acknowledge the pain the small movement gave him, under the covers of his bed, a kunai rested in his left hand, just waiting to strike at whoever was in range.

"I know," Haku replied calmly, "but it is still too early to kill Gato. If we cause a commotion, they'll be after us again and I enjoy the peace of the forest. We must be patient for just a little while longer."

Zabuza smiled at his companion and let the covers fall once again. "Of course, you're right." His eyes slowly drifted back towards the ceiling and his smile faded. "How long will I be stuck like this?" he asked for what must have been the tenth time since he had awakened in the forest and pulled the senbon from his throat while Haku in his Hunter-nin mask looked on.

"A few days more is all," the long haired boy replied sweetly, "your strength should already be returning. Another three days, perhaps four, no longer than that."

"I still think you should have killed them rather than putting me in that damn temporary death."

"My apologies, Zabuza-san," Haku smiled, "but you never told me to kill them."

"You're too kind for your own good," Zabuza growled.

"Yes, you're right. I am sorry."

"I don't need your apologies, only your strength."

ooo

"H-how are you feeling today, sensei?" Hinata asked as she quietly stepped into Kurenai's room and found the jounin awake and partially sitting up.

"Better, thank you, Hinata," the older woman replied with a warm smile. It had been three days since they had stumbled into Tazuna's house, Hinata, Kiba, and Kurenai covered in her blood. Kurenai really didn't remember much of what had happened until last night when she had finally managed to remain conscious long enough to form a few long term memories. Hinata and Tazuna's interestingly named daughter, Tsunami, had been caring for her as her body struggled to replenish the lost blood. During her more lucid moments before the pain medication that Hinata prepared for her took over and her body forced her to sleep, she had heard the story of the Hunter-nin and the death of Zabuza.

Shino and Kiba had accompanied Tazuna to the incomplete bridge and watched over him as he and a couple of other men worked, argued over the plans, and argued even more over the danger of continuing the construction. According to Kiba, at least two of the men had looked ready to quit and only a lot of pleading had kept them on the job for one more day. Given the size and complexity of the bridge, it would take Tazuna and his small work crew at least two lifetimes just to come close to finishing it.

Tazuna claimed that it was no big deal and that more workers would show up the following day, but somehow Kurenai didn't buy it. From what Kiba and Shino had told her, the townspeople moved around like the living dead. They were upright and went about their daily schedules, but there was no life in their eyes. Gato owned this town and they all knew it, no one would stick their neck out for fear of having a blade pass through it.

"I brought you some clean bandages," Hinata smiled, showing Kurenai the white strips of cloth as well as a small clay bowl with water in it.

"Thank you, just shut the door first," Kurenai said as she began to open the loose fitting robe Tsunami had given her to wear while she rested and recovered. Kurenai's green chuunin vest was ruined and her other clothes were too tight to wear when being treated for an injury such as hers. Hinata gave her a questioning look as she did as she was asked.

"I saw Kiba take a peek in here last tome," Kurenai explained, "You'd think the guy had never seen a woman's breasts before…" she flashed a mischievous smile at the younger kunoichi and then added, "or maybe it's just that he's never seen any as nice as mine!" She chuckled at her own joke and then winced as her side protested the action.

"I-is the pain killer wearing out?" Hinata asked worriedly as she hurried over and knelt next to her teacher's futon.

"It's fine," Kurenai sighed as the pain ebbed. "I don't want any more medicine anyway."

"But sensei…"

"I said it's fine!" Kurenai snapped with more force than she meant to. She instantly regretted it when she saw Hinata recoil as if struck. The young ninja whispered an apology and began mechanically removing the bandages that covered the ugly wound.

"I'm sorry," Kurenai said after a moment. The bandages fell away, revealing an angry red line with dark stitches crisscrossing it. Considering their supplies, Hinata's limited knowledge of medical jutsu, and the short amount of time that she'd had to heal, Kurenai thought the wound looked remarkably good, certainly there would be an unpleasant scar, but very few people would ever see it anyway and there was currently only one who wasn't a medic-nin that stood a chance of seeing it – assuming she continued to find him interesting and attractive long enough, which seemed more and more likely every time they saw each other. "I… I don't like being laid-up like this. It makes me feel useless and irritable, but I'm not mad at you."

Hinata nodded as she dipped a clean, brown rag into the bowl of water and dabbed at the wound to clean it, still not meeting her teacher's eyes.

"I don't want any medication because I need to have my wits about me, we're going to go train today," Kurenai explained as Hinata pulled out the fresh set of bandages and began winding them tightly around her waist.

"T-train?" Hinata asked, finally looking up. "Why?"

"If Gato can hire someone like Zabuza just to hold on to this place, there'll be more coming eventually." She shifted her weight back and forth, testing her injured side and the flexibility her bandages left her with. "We don't have any reliable means of calling for help short of sending one of you back to Konoha to carry the message, which would only make us weaker until you returned, and I won't be a hundred percent for a while, so you three will have to get better and make up the difference."

"Um, if Gato is going to send someone else… h-how will we have enough time to get stronger?"

Kurenai winked and smiled reassuringly as she reached up and pinched Hinata's cheek affectionately. "Trust me. I know what I'm doing." Silently she added, _'I think.'_

ooo

A few hours later, Kurenai led her team into a small clearing in the woods. She hadn't planned on teaching them this technique for a while yet, but after seeing Naruto's apparent mastery of it – which implied that Kakashi had his team on an accelerated training schedule – she had rethought her plan. If her team was going to make a name for themselves and earn a moment in the spot light with the other teams with the more well known members or parentage, they were going to have to pick up the pace. They eventually reached a small clearing surrounded on all sides by tall, thick trees with few low branches to get in the way of her genin. They would be perfect for climbing.

"Today we're going to learn to climb trees," she explained as she turned towards her team.

"Uh, Kurenai-sensei, I climbed trees when I was a little kid. How is this training?" Kiba asked as he stared up at the large trees in front of them.

"Because this time you aren't going to use your hands," Kurenai replied with a smile. Kiba and Hinata still looked confused while Shino looked about the same as ever but his sunglasses – and, presumably, his eyes – were watching her carefully, which might have meant that he was waiting for an explanation. "I can only show you a little because I haven't recovered completely yet, but just watch."

She took a few ginger steps towards one of the trees and then placed her foot against it and began to walk straight up, apparently ignoring all laws of gravity. After only three or four steps she turned and walked back down, pressing her hand against her side which was once again flaring painfully. Hinata took a step forward to help her, but Kurenai waved her off.

"I'm fine," she told the younger ninja, clearly lying, but not leaving room in her voice for her claim to be challenged. After a moment the pain ebbed and she stood a little taller and continued the lesson. "This exercise will help you learn to control your chakra more easily. It's not flashy, but it's tough and requires a lot of concentration and precision.

"You have to control the amount of chakra you release and then you have to bring it out of the proper area. You can't climb the tree the way I just did if you release half the chakra out of your hands when all of it needs to be going to your feet. And at the same time, you'll fall if you fail to bring out enough or bring out too much while you climb. Training like this will also help build up your stamina so that you have more chakra to use as well." She looked around at her students and smiled cheerfully. "This can be a difficult skill to learn, even for seasoned shinobi, but I think you can do it." _'If Naruto can figure it out, any of you can,'_ she added silently."You just have to gather the right amount of chakra at the bottom of your feet and you will stick to the tree. It doesn't take much chakra, but you have to push it out of your feet, which can be difficult. If you use too little, you won't stick, and if you use too much, you'll just be pushed away. Got it?"

None of them looked excited after hearing about the training… though they hadn't exactly seemed thrilled from the get go. Hinata, Kurenai knew, was terrified of trying something new in front of her teammates because she tended to fail and at least part of the reason she tended failed was because she was terrified of trying something new in front of her teammates. Kiba usually lost interest when things got technical, but was a quick study and would eventually figure it out. His chakra use normally fell into the 'good enough' category, good enough to get him by, but not particularly great. The fact that this would be a hard skill to teach Akamaru only aided his lack of enthusiasm. And Shino was Shino. Kurenai had no doubt that he would master it quickly, assuming that his father or another Aburame Clan member hadn't already taught him how to do it.

She reached into the pocket of Tsunami's robe, pulled out three kunai, and tossed them to the three genin. "Use these to mark your spot as you climb, that way you can see if you're getting better. I'd like all three of you to eventually be able to walk all the way to one of the top branches, but running to gain some momentum might help at first. I'll stand back and give you any help I can, but this is something that you will at least partly have to figure out for yourselves. Go ahead and start whenever you feel ready."

Kiba dashed forward, managed three steps up the tree and then felt his foot sink into the wood, with a cry of alarm he fell backwards and landed on his head. He lay still for a moment and then sat up rubbing his head and looking up at the footprint buried in the wood just slightly above eye level. "Damn."

Hinata tried to think positively as she ran towards the tree, but felt her doubt creep back in just as she started to take her first step up the trunk. Her fear made her hesitate and when trying to bend the laws of gravity, she who hesitates is lost… or at least smacks her head against the large tree, which is what Hinata did.

Shino, on the other hand, did not hesitate. He ran forward and then up the tree making it a full ten steps before slashing his kunai against the trunk as he flipped down and away, landing gracefully. He looked up and checked his first attempt without comment.

Kurenai watched her team's initial go at it and sighed, but was careful not to show any disappointment on her face. It wasn't that she'd thought they would get it right away, she'd just hoped that there would be a little more to work with in the beginning. Telling Hinata not to be scared, telling Kiba to pay more attention before he split his skull open, and telling Shino good job, seemed to be where most of their training sessions started.

"Good job, Shino," she said as he finished calculating the current height he was capable of. "Make sure you keep the chakra flow to your feet constant and you'll have it in no time." Her eyes shifted to the blue haired girl in the middle, "Are you alright, Hinata?"

"Y-yes, sensei," Hinata replied quickly, her face burning with shame.

"Don't be afraid to fall, but expect to stick to the trunk. When you hesitated, you stopped pushing chakra towards your feet." Kurenai smiled reassuringly at the young Hyuuga and then added, "It's okay to screw it up. No one gets it on their first go."

"I'm okay too," Kiba groaned from the ground. Akamaru had come over and was licking his friends face and wagging his tail, earning himself a scratch behind the ears.

"I wasn't worried about you," the jounin smirked, "your skull is too hard for a little blow to the head to hurt you. And even if it did, it would only be an improvement."

"That's cold, sensei," Kiba frowned playfully. "So, what did I do wrong, other than falling on my head?"

"You tried too hard and didn't pay enough attention. Too much chakra, not enough control."

Kiba nodded and looked back up at his footprint. "Well, it shouldn't be hard to beat that mark at least."

Kurenai smiled and the three tried again. Two hours later Shino could take about twenty steps before losing his grip on the tree. Kiba seemed to be hovering around the fifteen step mark, but was quickly catching on to where he was going wrong and was improving almost every try. And Hinata was slowly gaining enough confidence to actually show what she was capable of. It was, Kurenai reflected from the shady spot she sat in and occasionally called out encouragement and instructions from, a predictable training session. Actually, they were doing better than she'd thought they would after their first day.

Kiba continued to be done in by excessive chakra use and inattention, but would probably be able to reach some of the lower branches by the following day. Eventually Hinata would realize that she had the best chakra control of any of them and master the skill quickly; it was just a matter of her convincing herself that she could do it. And Shino, as always, approached the training from a strictly logical standpoint, evaluating his failures and successes until he saw what his problem was and made it to the top. Kurenai was certain that within a week or two he would be able to ascend a tree without even a second thought. Perhaps, if they were still here at that point, she would start him on the more advanced water walking training.

All three were breathing hard, the exertion of pushing chakra through their feet and maintaining its flow as they ran quickly draining their stamina, but none of them complained and none of them stopped working.

_'They really are a great team,'_ Kurenai thought happily as she slowly got to her feet. "Alright you three, we're going to miss dinner if we stay out here much longer, let's head back in and you can work on it some more tomorrow."

Akamaru barked excitedly at the word 'dinner', or at least Kurenai guessed that was what he was so happy about, and Shino and Kiba nodded and followed her. Hinata, however, continued to look up at her tree.

"Hinata?" Kurenai called when she noticed that the girl was not following.

"I... I would like to stay a little longer, Kurenai-sensei," Hinata replied taking a deep calming breath.

Kurenai watched her for a moment and then nodded, "Don't stay out too late. I'll make sure to save you any crab or eel that Tsunami-san cooks."

Hinata wrinkled her nose and laughed softly at what she hoped was a joke as her team walked back to Tazuna's house. Then she turned back to the tree, braced herself, and began to run towards it yet again.

ooo

Since time began, people had lived on the shores of the great ocean, harvesting its fish, waiting out its terrible storms, and enjoying the salt in the air. Some couldn't even remember a time when a member of their family had ever left the town they were born in for any reason, let alone moved away. They lived on the beach, they worked on the beach, and eventually they died on the beach. Naruto had visited many coastal towns in his lifetime and Ginoza was indistinguishable from about seventy-five percent of them. It looked old, run down, weather-beaten and smelled strongly of raw fish and salt water. There were a few new houses – visible because they stood a little straighter, having not been beaten by as many storms – but even the new wood on these homes looked about the same as the old wood on the older homes.

Most of the villages like Ginoza that Naruto had visited had been bustling with people either trying to buy or sell fish. Children had laughed and run along the docks with their little fishing poles, upsetting the older men and women who were actually trying to catch a few fish. Large, barrel-chested men with dark tans had tended to their nets and boats, jovially telling stories of adventures on the sea to each other while they worked.

In this, however, Ginoza was quite different. There were no children playing, no men with funny or exciting stories, and no fish being sold to the highest – or loudest – bidder. This could have had to do with the fact that it was getting close to evening when Naruto first stepped foot in the town, but even with that excuse, it seemed eerily quiet to him. What few people he saw quickly went about their business and then hurried home as if they were afraid of being caught outside for too long. Naruto called out to a couple of them, trying to get their attention, but his voice only seemed to hurry them along.

No one smiled.

Finally he spotted and old man with a fishing pole and a large bucket that held the fruits of his day's labor. The man was moving more slowly than the others, either because of the weight of his bucket or his age, and Naruto hurried after him.

"Hey, old man," he said as soon as he'd caught up, "have you seen a couple of kids about my age, a dark haired woman with red eyes, and an old guy come through here lately?"

The man didn't reply other than to give the young ninja a shrug and try to shuffle away a little faster.

Naruto had never been one to accept being ignored and after getting plenty of it from the rest of the villagers in this town (not to mention the ignoring he got back in Konoha) his frustration was already at the breaking point. He reached out and snagged the man by his shirt and spun him around, water sloshed out of the bucket and drenched both of their sandals, but neither took much notice of it. "I'm talking to you, old man," he growled threateningly. "Have you seen them?"

The man gave a hesitant shake of his head and refused to meet Naruto's eyes. "I didn't see nothin'," he muttered.

Naruto's small fists dug into the man's shirt as he lifted him off the ground, a feat that surprised and scared the fisherman. "Do you live around here?" he demanded. The man nodded fearfully. "Then you sure as hell saw them or know someone who did, they'd stick out too much for you not to know about them. One was a small girl in a jacket with dark hair and pale eyes, another was a loudmouth with a white puppy either in his jacket or on top of his head, and the other one... well..." Naruto's rant paused as he tried to think of how to describe Shino, "...well, you'd have heard about those two. And you definitely would have heard about the woman, she's too good looking to ignore. Now either tell me what you saw or point me to someone who will!"

"I… I can't…" the man whispered. "P-please… if Gato-sama finds out about them…"

"Gato?" Naruto frowned and lowered the man back to the ground, "Who's Gato?"

"He runs things around here," the man quickly replied as he smoothed his shirt. "He… he has spies everywhere."

It took a moment, but at last Naruto remembered who he was talking about. Gato was the one who'd hired Zabuza and would eventually be the one who hired the men who killed Zabuza. He was, technically, the real problem, though Zabuza posed the more immediate danger. "I won't tell, but those are my friends and I need to find them, they're in danger."

The man shook his head once more, but this time gave a small motion with his fingers towards one of the docks. "Kaji-san might know something about them," he whispered and then hurried in the opposite direction as Naruto turned towards the indicated dock.

The dock was old and rickety, looking like it wanted nothing more than to finally collapse into the sea and was just waiting for the right opportunity to do so. Every step Naruto took upon its wooden planks caused it to creak and sway slightly. The man at the end of the dock, Kaji, knew Naruto was coming from the moment he stepped onto it.

"Are you Kaji-san?" Naruot asked, trying to keep his voice soft and polite despite his growing impatience.

"Who's asking?" Kaji replied curtly as his hand moved towards a knife that he'd been using to clean a few fish earlier.

Naruto ignored the man's question, the last thing he needed was for this man to have a name to go with an already pretty distinct face. "I'm looking for a group of ninja about my age and an older woman with dark hair and red eyes. They would have been traveling with an annoying old man named Tazuna."

Kaji's eyes widened and his hand tucked the knife behind his back to conceal it. "I don't know what you're talking about. All I use my boat for is fishing all day, every day."

Naruto looked the man up and down, wondering if he was the same man who had taken his team over to the small island that was the Wave Country. It had been far too long for him to remember the man's plain face, but he supposed it was possible. "Look, I'm not working for this Gato person you guys are all so worried about," he said with an annoyed sigh, "I just want to find my friends."

Whatever he should have said, the name "Gato" was not it. Naruto had barely finished speaking before Kaji threw the knife at him – not even bothering to aim or watch to see if he'd made contact – and leaped into his boat, pulling the cord to start the engine the second his feet touched down. Naruto easily dodged the knife, which would have been hard pressed to hurt him anyway as the blade had rotated away from him by the time it reached him, and stared after the fleeing man.

He could go after him, perhaps even catch him after a while, but it was pointless. Kaji was obviously the one who had taken them or he wouldn't have been so freaked out about getting caught and that meant that they were already over there. The only thing Kaji could tell him would be how long ago they'd crossed the strait and Naruto was certain that they'd been too far ahead of him for it to matter much at this point. The only question was whether or not they'd run into Zabuza… and, if they had, who had managed to survive.

Naruto looked down at the dark blue water, grimacing at the waves. Water walking was easy when the water actually stayed still or was only slowly moving, when it was a churning ocean it could be like trying to run up a slide while someone poured sand down from the top.

"Damn it, I hate doing this on choppy water," he grumbled as he took two steps back and then ran to the end of the dock and jumped as far as he could out into the water. His right foot hit a wave as he came down and he nearly fell, but managed to steady himself quickly, and then took off across the sea, leaping over waves every couple of steps and cursing the gods every time two crashing waves gave him a mouthful of salty water.

ooo

Kiba was not a fan of children. They were annoying, they treated Akamaru like he was a toy, and they were loud. Of course, a lot of people thought that _he_ was loud and annoying – his sister, for one – but he was usually loud for a reason, kids were just loud… and stupid.

Tazuna's grandson, Inari, on the surface, looked like a cute little boy, always helping his mother or going fishing. The team hadn't even known he existed until their second day in the house when he walked in and quietly sat down for dinner. In Kiba's eyes he'd even earned himself a few points for offering Akamaru a little food, but not touching or talking to the puppy in a demeaning sort of way. Then he'd turned his dark brown eyes on the other ninja from Konoha sitting at the table and scowled at them from under the green-striped bucket hat that seemed to be a permanent fixture atop his messy black hair.

"You should leave," he told them in a dead voice. "You'll just die if you stay here."

That was it. Just thinking he could come in and say something like that without even introducing himself or offering an explanation. "You'll just die…" and then he didn't even have the balls to stay there so Kiba could yell at him. After he'd made his little pronouncement he'd got out of his seat and went upstairs and didn't come back down even when his mother called for him.

Tsunami had apologize profusely for her son's rudeness, which made Kiba even more annoyed with the kid, and then Tazuna had told them the story of the boy's adoptive father, Kaiza, who had been a hero in the village and who had befriended Inari even before his mother married him.

When Tazuna explained that Kaiza had been falsely accused and then executed in front of the entire village, including Inari, Hinata had cried, but Kiba had grown even more annoyed with the boy. A crime like that shouldn't just be meekly accepted! The kid's dad was murdered and Inari just… what? Gave up? It was an insult to the father who'd loved him and tried to teach him how to be a real man.

He'd said as much and received a shocked look from Hinata and an annoyingly calm explanation from Shino that Inari was only a little boy with no training in anything that would allow him to defend himself or his village.

They'd argued all through dinner about it. Shino and his damn logic had, as always, sounded so right, but that was only because Kiba's passion was harder to put into words. It was easy to point out cold hard facts, but facts didn't rule most people's lives the way it did Shino and the rest of the Aburame clan. Kiba could understand Inari not being physically able to try to avenge his dad, but to just let Gato and his men mentally and emotionally defeat him as well… well that was inexcusable no matter how many facts Shino pointed out.

So now, as they sat at the dinner table eating their food and waiting for Hinata to return from the training grounds, Kiba couldn't help but glare at the little boy who was quietly eating his fish looking for all the world like a corpse that had climbed out of the ground, cleaned itself off and come down to dinner. There was just no life in the kid's eyes!

"Did you let anyone kick you around again today, kid?" he asked.

"Shut up," the little boy replied listlessly.

"Leave him alone, Kiba," Kurenai warned from across the table.

"Sorry, sensei," he sighed, "I just can't understand someone who'd give up so easily. You'd think he wasn't even angry at the people who killed his father."

"Stop," Kurenai hissed at him.

"I mean, if it was me," he continued just wanting to get a little more out so he could make his point without arguing with nearly emotionless Shino, "I'd be pissed, but maybe he didn't really like his da—"

"I didn't!" Inari shouted, showing signs of life for the first time since Kiba met him. "I didn't like him! I don't care that he's dead! And I won't care when you're dead either!" And then the boy turned and fled upstairs without acknowledging his mother's call for him to come back.

Everyone stared after the boy and then turned to Kiba, who suddenly felt bad for pushing things too far. Inari was, after all, just a little boy. An _annoying_ little boy, but a little boy nonetheless.

He sighed and gave his head a little shake as he mentally kicked himself for being so mean. "Sorry," he whispered and actually felt it.

Before anything else could be said, Hinata knocked softly on the front door and then came inside. Her face showed her confusion at the tense atmosphere in the house, but her presence actually helped defuse the situation considerably. No one wanted to have to explain it to her and without doing so it would be hard to yell at Kiba for his thoughtlessness, so they forgave him, or at least that's how he took it.

A small glance that he caught from Tsunami made him wonder if he didn't have an ally in the room anyway. Maybe he'd only said what needed to be said.

_'Stupid brat,'_ he grumbled as he savagely dug into the simple meal.

ooo

By the time Naruto found the bridge, he was completely soaked, freezing cold, and beyond exhausted. His little body just wasn't used to expending such large amounts of energy over prolonged periods of time. He quickly walked to one of its supports, up the pillar, and finally onto the proper side of the bridge. From there it only took him another few minutes of running to reach the island and with it, Tazuna's home town.

The town before him was actually fairly large, he'd forgotten how big the place was, though it looked far more run down than the last time he'd stood on the bridge and looked at it. He supposed that after a decade or so of prosperity this village would more closely match the one from his memories.

There was no one around, but it was getting dark and this village was even more used to living under Gato's thumb than the one on the mainland. While it was good that no one would see the blond haired stranger in the orange clothing, it would make finding Team Eight – assuming they were still alive (which they _were_, he tried to convince himself) – that much more difficult. The lake was located somewhere past the outskirts of town to the west, but Naruto couldn't remember where Tazuna's house was – and that was where the _living_ Team Eight should be.

He really didn't want to go to the lake.

So long as he didn't see any evidence of their deaths, his friends were still officially alive. If, however, he went there and had the proof in front of him, he would have no choice but to accept it.

Naruto stared longingly at the town, hoping that one of the houses would stick out as being the bridge builder's home, but all of them just looked old, wooden, and sparsely lit. After a moment he decided that he had no choice and began to drag his tired body towards the woods at the edge of town.

Once he reached the woods it was possible for him to travel much quicker, but he chose to drag his feet instead, taking as much time as possible. Tree hoping had always been easy, even when he was young, and the feeling of the cool salty breeze blowing in his face and chilling his damp skin helped to wake him a little, but he wasn't looking forward to the destination. The journey took less than half an hour, even at his slowed pace, and when he arrived he was pleasantly surprised to find no bodies waiting to be identified.

In the growing darkness he could see that the ground along the path had been torn up and spotted a kunai lying in the grass a short distance from it. Just as he started to let himself believe that they had either avoided Zabuza altogether or had managed to survive the battle, his nose caught a whiff of blood on the breeze. Instantly he turned in the direction it had come from and began to search the ground with his eyes. The source was not hard to find.

Naruto closed his eyes and swallowed hard. There was no body, but there was a lot of blood on the grass. He stepped towards it and knelt down, brushing his fingers against the sticky dyed-red blades. It was dry and the covered grass crackled under his touch, whoever did the bleeding had done so at least a few days before, though for a tracker of his mediocre skill it was impossible to tell how long exactly.

Naruto forced his eyes away from the dark spot and searched for any other clues he might find. There was another small patch of blood a few meters away and some footprints, but that was it.

He would have to look elsewhere for his answers.

Naruto took a step back towards the town, but stumbled as his vision blurred in front of his eyes. "Damn it," he grumbled as he tried to take another step, but nearly fell.

After a full day of running, without having slept the night before, and with his energy halved by the use of a shadow clone, he'd already just about reached his body's chakra limit. Unless he started augmenting his energy with demon chakra – which, he knew from experience, was not a very good idea – there was no way he'd be able to do any more hunting until he'd sat down and rested… and had a bite to eat, of course. He would just have to let his hopes rest on the fact that there were no bodies to collect. In the morning things would be clearer anyway.

He stumbled to a nearby tree and somehow managed to scale it, finding as comfortable a spot amongst the branches as he could and looked around wearily as he took a few bites of a ration bar he'd been carrying in his backpack. It was going to be hard to stay awake all night after what he'd done that day, but there was no way around it. He couldn't afford to fall asleep and have the remaining shadow clone in Konoha vanish, not this early anyway. He'd have to sleep eventually, the following night or the one after if things hadn't been resolved by then, but he could at least make it forty-eight hours even if this body wasn't used to such things.

With a deep breath and a promise to remain awake he settled down for the night, staring up at the stars and wondering what he'd find in the morning light. Given that he couldn't sleep, he knew he was in for a long night of worry and struggle.

"No bodies," he begged quietly as he took another bite of the disgusting ration bar. "I can handle anything but bodies. Just let them be alive, that's all I ask…"

ooo

After dinner, Hinata slipped upstairs to go to her room and clean herself up a little. She was tired, but feeling better than she had in days. After her team had left, she'd found it easier to do the tree-climbing exercise. She couldn't do it perfectly by any stretch of the imagination, but she'd been able to go up at least as high as Kiba and had nearly caught up to Shino.

It wouldn't be enough to get a "well done" from her father, but she'd long since given up hope of ever being that good at anything. In this one area she didn't feel like she was going to hold her team back too much and that was enough for now.

As she passed Inari's room, the door slightly open, she heard the sounds of crying from within. She paused at the door and considered going in. It would be rude to intrude upon the poor boy's grief… but it would be unkind to leave him to cry alone.

When her mother had died, she'd often cried herself to sleep at night, wishing for some sort of comfort to come. Her father had never cried, nor had any other Hyuuga that she'd seen. Grief was a personal thing, not to be shared with others. Yet she was certain that it would have been easier for her if there had been someone to hold her and love her while she poured out her emotions.

She opened the door farther before she could talk herself out of it. Inside she found the little boy sitting on his bed, cradling a picture of his father and staring out the window at the stars and the sea as tears streamed down his face. She wanted to talk to him, but couldn't think of anything to say. She could sympathize with his feelings of loss and weakness, but she didn't know how to lead him away from them as she felt just as weak as he and so she was left standing there feeling like an intruder.

Finally she took a deep breath and quietly asked, "I-Inari-kun… are y-you okay?"

"I'm fine," he replied in a cold, dead voice, quickly wiping at his tears to hide them.

Hinata watched him for a moment longer and then tentatively stepped closer and sat down next to him on his bed. "Y-you must… m-miss him," she whispered, scarcely believing that she was going to bring up such a painful subject.

Inari's jaw flexed. "Who?" he asked defiantly.

"Your father."

"I don't miss _him_!" he hissed, his eyes suddenly becoming glassy as more tears welled up in them despite his efforts to wipe them away. "He was nothing but a liar."

Hinata stared wide-eyed at the boy in shock. "W-what do you mean?"

Inari's face twisted as he fought down a sob that was trying to come out. "He promised he'd always protect me, but he lied! He can't protect anyone because he's _dead_… and you'll die too if you try to fight Gato!"

Hinata was silent for a long time, trying to think of something to say, but finding nothing that seemed appropriate. Finally she reached out a tentative hand and placed it on the boy's back. He flinched away from the contact for a second, but then slowly leaned into it.

"My mother died… a-a long time ago… when my sister was born," Hinata whispered as they sat there looking out at the night sky. It was odd to talk about it again, the only other time she'd spoken about it had been with Naruto… and he'd laughed by the end. Still, there was something about saying the words that seemed to make it easier each time, like an old wound that was finally being allowed to heal. It probably helped that she could now see that Naruto had not meant to hurt he with his laughter, his appearance and confusion back in Konoha proved that much, though it didn't explain what he could have been laughing at if not her story. Hinata pushed those thoughts quickly from her mind and added, "I-I know that it hurts to lose someone you love."

Inari didn't reply, instead choosing to brush his hand across his face in an attempt to wipe away tears he hoped to hide. He let himself lean more against her hand until she was practically hugging him.

"I-I don't think that she has left me though," Hinata continued not even totally sure of where she was even going with her story. Her mouth seemed to be running out in front of her brain. "She… she is with me, I think, watching me. M-maybe she's even proud of me…" she paused, memories of past failures running through her head, and then added, "…sometimes, anyway."

Inari snorted contemptuously. "Yeah, well, I don't think my dad is watching over me… and I don't care if he's not proud of me. If I tried to stand up to Gato and his men, I'd just get killed…"

"P-perhaps," Hinata conceded, "but maybe he is just waiting for you to b-be in need of protection… instead of living in fear all the time." It was an old Hyuuga tradition to believe that the spirits of their ancestors continued to look out for them and guide them. Most probably didn't believe in it anymore, but Hinata liked to think that there was some truth in even the most fanciful of stories.

Inari huffed indignantly, but didn't offer a counter argument, probably he didn't even care.

Hinata fell quiet, wondering how it was that she found herself able to talk to this little boy she barely knew when she was too scared to say more than a few words to anyone outside of her team – and sometimes not even them – back in Konoha. Perhaps it was because she and he had both lost a loved one or because both of their lives had changed so drastically when that loved one had died… or maybe she was just so tired from doing the tree climbing training that she didn't have the energy for her normal fear and hesitation.

"I used to cry for my mother… at night when no one would hear me, w-when my family would consider it more appropriate to allow my grief to show. For a long time, I could think of nothing but what I'd lost. The smiles, the hugs, the feeling of safety… and then slowly, very slowly, I began to think not about what was no longer there, but about what I had been able to enjoy. All those memories that I had that would stay with me, the way my mother remains with me. My little sister, Hanabi, she never got to see those things, she won't be able to remember just how much our mother loved us… so, though it hurts to have lost her, I am actually blessed to have had what little time I did to feel all those wonderful things that a loved one gives us. Those thoughts helped ease the pain… so it wasn't as overwhelming as it had been before. It still hurt, but little by little the hurt goes away and all you have left are the good memories that make you stronger."

It felt like the longest stream of spoken word that had ever come out of her mouth, and she didn't even remember stuttering as she said it, she barely remembered thinking. She just opened her mouth and out it came. Whether or not it meant anything to Inari, she couldn't say, but she felt a sense of satisfaction with what she'd managed to tell him.

She waited for a moment longer and then stood up, gave him a small bow, and then practically fled back to her own room.

From the window just be low Inari's, Tsunami let out a soft sigh, having listened to the whole conversation, and then turned her sad, thoughtful eyes back to the housework that needed to be done. Upstairs, Inari sat perfectly still for a long time, thinking of things he had seen and of words spoken to him long ago by the man he loved.

o

o

A/N: A boring chapter, but it had to be there. Sorry, Naruto has to get to the Wave Country and Team Eight has to do _something _while they wait for him. There will be a little more action in the next one (_very_ little) and a lot more in the following one. Given that the Wave Country arc takes up two and a half volumes of the manga (almost six months at one chapter per week for those who were reading it back then), I don't think this is too bad really.

This chapter has gone through a bit of revision real recently in an attempt to cut out a lot of repeated stuff in the next chapter… which is getting even more revision. Unfortunately, actually working on these chapters a little forces me to slow down just a bit on the updating (it's nearly been four days since the last update, a new record with this story), but it can't be helped. In addition to changes in this chapter, there have been a few tweaks to past chapters, nothing major, but Naruto now has a conversation with Sasuke in chapter 5 (before Sakura tries to ask him out and then ends up eating with Naruto). A reviewer pointed out that I shouldn't just say "conversations with Sasuke weren't going well" but should actually show it. It's not a major conversation and it changes nothing, but now Naruto's Uchiha troubles are shown, not just told.

While reading through and changing some things in this chapter, I found myself wondering why I didn't have Kurenai consider calling for support. That's what _I_ would have done if I were in their situation, but then I don't know that there's ever been a case where someone has actually called for reinforcements in the manga – maybe during the Kakashi Gaiden, when Minato goes to help the other Leaf ninja who are pinned down… but that's about it. Kakashi definitely doesn't consider it in Wave Country arc, Shikamaru doesn't really have the option to do so during the Sasuke retrieval… what other missions are there? I had to put the 'no way to call home' part in there to make an excuse for it. Hopefully that works.

Also, sorry if the tree climbing thing was too much of a retread of what's already been done. I thought about it long and hard, but couldn't come up with another type of training that they could really do – though having Kurenai see Naruto use the skill seems like as good an excuse for it to reappear as any. Given the improvement Team Seven had after this training, it's pretty obvious that it helps a lot and I can't imagine that other jounin wouldn't know this as well… Anyway, it is what it is.

So, funny story. Back when I first wrote this chapter which was about… oh, seven months or so ago, the town that Naruto visits in this chapter was called "Minato" (it translates as "Dock," which is why I chose it as the name of a fishing town). Little did I know at the time, Minato would actually end up being Naruto's father's name! Crazy little coincidence. I didn't even notice until just last week when I reread the chapter and though, 'why is this town named after Naruto's dad???' So, Minato was replaced with Ginoza, which is a real village (with a population just under five thousand) in the Kunigami district in Okinawa, Japan… I bet you didn't think you'd get a Japanese geography lesson when you started reading this Author's Note, did you? Hopefully you're all paying attention, there's going to be a test towards the end of the story and if enough people fail to get it right, I'm leaving you all with a horrible cliffhanger – something like Naruto being captured by Orochimaru and facing torture and execution – and never updating again…no, no, I wouldn't do that! Not for failing a test… failing to review on the other hand… ;)


	10. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

o

"You'll catch a cold sleeping in a place like this," a soft voice whispered in Hinata's ear.

She woke with a start, her pale eyes round and confused as a pretty face slowly came into focus. At first, she couldn't remember why she was in the woods, but as sleep released its hold on her mind it quickly came back to her. She'd woken early and, after checking to make sure that Kurenai's bandages didn't need changing, had hurried to the woods so she could get in an hour or two of training before her teammates arrived. Apparently she'd been more tired from the night before than she'd realized.

Hinata looked up at the person kneeling next to her. For a moment, she thought the newcomer might be a girl, but something about her eyes and hands, as well as the moderately pronounced Adam's apple in the throat and the lack of any swell in the breasts led her to believe that for all her beauty, 'she' was probably a 'he.'

He was wearing a sleeveless pink yakata with a pretty spiral pattern on it and a thin, black band around his neck. His long, beautiful, black hair framed his face in a way that Hinata could only dream of getting hers to do and ran down almost to his waist in the back. He smiled kindly as he caught her eyes examining his features and they both blushed.

"T-thank you for waking me," Hinata said quickly as she rose to her feet and bowed politely.

The boy returned the bow. "You're welcome."

The two were quiet for a moment, Hinata unsure of what to say next and the boy apparently content to enjoy the quiet of the forest until she came up with something. Finally Hinata noticed the small basket resting in the leaves at the boy's feet and asked, "What are y-you picking?"

The boy lifted his basket and showed it to her. "There are plants in these woods which make good medicine," he explained. "A few are good for pain, but these just help fight infection and speed healing."

Hinata picked up one of the plants inside and inspected it carefully. "W-we have a similar plant in the woods near my home, but I've never seen this variety." If these plants were good for healing, she'd have to collect some and use them in her treatment of Kurenai.

"Are you a ninja?" the boy asked, glancing at the hitai-ate that she wore around her neck instead of on her forehead where it normally belonged.

"Y-yes," she admitted, "I'm from Konoha."

"How exciting. You must be very strong if they let you come so far from home."

Hinata blushed again and the small smile she'd been wearing since the conversation began fell away. "No, n-not really."

The boy also stopped smiling, "Forgive me, I didn't mean to…"

"N-no, it was not y-your fault… you have nothing to apologize for."

Again they were quiet for a moment and then the boy said, "I could use a little help collecting the plants… if you're not busy, would you like to help me?"

Hinata smiled at him. "Y-yes, I think I would like that."

ooo

The morning light helped jog Naruto's memory significantly – making the woods at least feel more familiar – and the rest (even if he hadn't been allowed to sleep) along with a bit of food left him feeling reenergized and only moderately terrified of what awaited him when he returned home… and what he might have to report when he got there. He removed another ration bar and bit into it. It was one of the most disgusting things he'd ever tasted, even worse than Sakura-chan's first and only attempt at cooking ramen shortly before her death, but it helped keep him energized and took the edge off his hunger.

After finishing his breakfast, he returned to the lake one more time and rechecked the blood stain that he'd found the night before. It wasn't quite as bad as he'd thought when he first saw it, but it was still pretty bad. There weren't any bodies though and that was something.

He searched the area for more clues about the battle that had taken place there, but found little. There were, however, several sets of heavy footprints leading back towards the village. Either Team Eight had walked away or someone had come and carried away the bodies…

Naruto frowned at the thought and then hurried off after the footprints. He wasn't going to find any more answers out here so he would have to go and see what he could find in the village.

He was still a short distance from Tazuna's village when he heard the sounds of soft laughter and movement among the bushes not far away. In an instant he was up in the nearest tree, hidden amongst the green leafs. Naruto peered down and scanned the area, his body tense and ready to leap into action should he be spotted by an enemy.

For a moment, he didn't hear or see anything, and then the most beautiful sound he'd heard in several days reached his ears.

"I-I think there is some more over here," Hinata's soft voice called as she stepped around a bush and knelt next to a patch of green plants.

Naruto nearly lost himself in his relief and jumped down to hug her, but before he did anything foolish, another person stepped into view. It was a beautiful girl that seemed strangely familiar. After a few seconds of staring at the newcomer Naruto's breath caught in his throat. She wasn't a girl.

_He_ was Haku.

Naruto instantly recalled his own first (actually, second) meeting with Haku in these same woods all those years ago. For a moment he thought it strange that even with a different team and, presumably, a different spot for the tree climbing training, Haku still ended up meeting a Leaf-nin, but then he realized that this wasn't totally a chance meeting just as his probably wasn't in the original timeline. Haku might not have known anyone would be in these woods training, but a ninja of his skill level wouldn't have needed many clues to find an inexperienced genin. It was too bad Haku was an enemy; someone with his sort of talent would be a great asset anywhere.

Naruto's mind wandered back to the fight between his team and Haku on the bridge. Haku could probably have killed both of them if he'd tried hard enough, certainly he could have killed Sasuke, but he'd been too kind hearted to go through with it – instead hitting those spots that would leave Sasuke into a deathlike state but not do any lasting harm. Naruto still had vivid memories of the dread that had swept over him when he saw what appeared to be Sasuke's death and the relief he'd felt with they discovered that Haku hadn't actually killed his friend. The truth was, for all his prodigious talent, Haku had no real desire to be a ninja; he just wanted to be useful to Zabuza.

With that thought a plan slowly began to take shape in Naruto's mind while he watched the two unsuspecting ninja collecting plants and putting them into a basket.

ooo

Haku and the young girl who eventually told him her name was Hinata worked together for nearly an hour before he excused himself. She had clearly been trying hard to keep from revealing too much without seeming rude, but the questions she evaded told him almost as much as those she answered. During that time he was able to discern that her jounin was still injured – which made sense given the severity of the injury Zabuza had inflicted on her – but healing quickly. After bidding her farewell and telling her that he hoped to see her again, he began to make his way back towards Gato's forest hideout.

He had only taken a few steps out of the young woman's line of sight when he became aware of a shadow moving through the trees above him. He didn't bother looking up or attempting to reach for one of the senbon tucked into his clothing, such movements would only alert his stalker that he'd been spotted. Instead he continued along as he had been, enjoying the warm weather and the early morning smells of the forest that was still just waking up as he searched for more healing herbs.

The shadow followed him until he knelt to pick up one of the plants that he was searching for and then it dropped almost silently to the ground. Had Haku not noticed it earlier, he doubted he would have even heard the landing or sensed the man or woman approach.

"You can stop playing," a surprisingly youthful voice informed him, "I know you heard me."

Haku turned and found a young man with spiky blond hair sticking out over the same Leaf hitai-ate as the girl he'd just met – and probably not much older than her either – wearing a bright orange outfit that left Haku wondering how the boy had been able to hide at all amongst the trees. Naruto had positioned himself so that he was standing only a little more than an arm's length away, just far enough that Haku would have to take a half step to reach him.

He must have noticed Haku measure the distance between them because he flashed a cocky grin that – mostly because of the odd whisker-like marks on his cheeks – reminded Haku of a fox, and said, "Don't bother. You'd be dead before you even laid a finger on me."

Haku smiled placatingly and made an effort to appear totally relaxed even if nothing could be farther from the truth. "I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean."

"I told you that you could stop playing, I know exactly who you are, Haku, and who you work for."

Haku's smile faded instantly. "May I ask your name then?"

"Sorry," Naruto replied evenly, "I always kind of liked you, but I can't trust you and my name isn't important anyway. What is important is that I've got a message for Zabuza that I need you to deliver and… I'd like you to answer a question. After that we can walk away peacefully or we can try to kill each other. It's up to you."

Haku hadn't really expected to get a name and, though the temptation was there, he resisted asking how it was that the blond ninja knew him enough to apparently be slightly found of him. There were more important things to learn from him first. "What is your message?"

"Tell Zabuza that Gato is going to betray and kill him whether he takes out old man Tazuna or not. He isn't going to give you guys whatever it is that he promised he'd pay you."

Haku was careful not to look surprised at anything the boy said, but his blood boiled at the thought of that vile vermin Gato attempting to double-cross Zabuza… even though Zabuza had already planned a similar double-cross of Gato, "And your question?"

Naruto hesitated and bit his lip before asking, "Is there anyway I talk you into not following Zabuza if he goes to kill Tazuna?"

Haku was silent for a few seconds and then asked, "Do you have many people who are special to you?"

Naruto's eyes closed and he sighed sadly, bowing his head in defeat as he realized what Haku's question implied as an answer. "Yes," he admitted.

"Then perhaps you will not be able to understand how I feel," Haku told him with a small shrug. "There is a pain that is worse than anything anyone can know. Not having a dream, not being needed or even wanted, to live with no reason for life… there is no pain that can compare to being unneeded and unwanted. There was a time – a long time – where I knew that pain and nothing else. Then I met Zabuza-san. He took me in, he desired me even if it was only as a tool, and he gave me a reason to exist. Without him I would be dead – or worse – and for him and his dreams I would gladly die."

With the other boy's head bowed and his eyes apparently closed, Haku took a chance and inched forward until the blond was within reach, carefully making no noise. "If you're friends get in our way, we'll have no choice but to kill them."

Naruto's head came up. "If you try, I'll kill you." It wasn't spoken like a threat, Haku realized, it was simply a statement of fact. The boy wasn't pretending to be brave. He actually believed that he could kill both Zabuza and Haku.

Haku dipped his head in a small bow. "Then the next time we meet will probably be the last."

The blond sucked in a deep breath. "It doesn't have to be this way," he said in a voice that was almost pleading. "Just walk away from this job. I don't want to have to kill you."

"That is a decision for Zabuza to make, but I already know what he will say. I'm afraid it is our fate to do battle unless you and your friends choose to get out of our way."

"That won't happen either."

"In that case, I fear you and I are enemies." Haku's voice gave no hint of his intent and his muscles did not tense before the movement, so when his hand suddenly shot out, a senbon appearing in his fist like magic, and swiped at the blond it should have come as a complete surprise.

Naruto, however, either wasn't caught off guard the way Haku had hoped he would be or else was exceptionally fast. He took a single step back and arched his body away from the fist and the senbon it carried, just managing to dodge the attack. "That was dumb," he growled as he straightened, his eyes flashing angrily.

Haku started to take another step forward to press the attack before the blond had a chance to counterattack, but a hint of movement behind him and the sudden sharp edge of a kunai pressed against his throat stopped him in his tracks.

"I told you that you'd be dead before you even laid a finger on me," Naruto's voice whispered in his ear. "Don't try that again."

Haku stared at the boy in front of him in silence while he collected himself, the blade against his throat a constant reminder as to how close he'd come to dying. Finally he held up the hand with the senbon in it and dropped the needle to show that he had no desire to fight anymore. The ninja behind him, as well as the kunai he'd been holding, vanished in a puff of smoke.

"May I ask you something now?" Haku asked after a quick glance behind him confirmed that they were apparently alone again.

"What?"

"Why did I not see you when Zabuza-san fought your fellow Leaf ninja?"

The blond looked like he was considering lying for a moment, but then decided that there was no harm in being truthful. "I guess you could say that I was running a little late."

Haku digested this information for a moment and then asked, "Then someone on that team one of your precious people?"

"Yes," Naruto replied with a slow nod, "all of them are precious to me."

Haku smiled sadly and said, "Then I truly wish that things could be different, I don't want to take a special person from anyone… but it seems our fates are already set."

Naruto's eyes widened in alarm for a brief moment and then squeezed shut as if he were trying to will away the truth of the words. Haku took that moment to turn and walk away, but on the faint breeze he heard the whispered words, "Let's hope not…"

He glanced back over his shoulder just in time to see the blond bring his fingers together and disappear in a puff of smoke. Yet another shadow clone. That meant that even with his power at least divided by three, he'd still been fast enough to evade an untelegraphed attacked. The boy, whoever he was, was a dangerous enemy indeed. It was possible, though unlikely, that he might just be capable of doing what he'd claimed when he said he would kill both Haku and Zabuza.

ooo

Haku entered Zabuza's room quietly and set down his basket. His master sat at the edge of the bed on the other side of the room holding an apple and staring at it intently.

"How are you feeling today, Zabuza-san?" the boy asked as he began to grind some of the plants he had collected into a paste. He used only the plants that helped prevent infection, leaving those that aided in recovery for a tea he planned to brew a little later.

Zabuza's hand squeezed the apple, crushing it with only minimal effort.

"It looks like you are almost recovered," Haku observed as he finished his work and brought the paste over to Zabuza, gently massaging it into the wounds on the man's neck.

"Yes, we should go soon, Haku."

Haku nodded as he finished his task and then began to prepare the tea. "I met a strange boy today," he began as the water heated. "He knew who I was."

"Was he from Kirigakure?" Zabuza asked, instantly giving the conversation his full attention.

Haku considered it but then shook his head. "No, I don't think so."

"Then how did he know you?"

"I don't know, I didn't ask, but he wore the hitai-ate of Konohagakure. He said he had a message for you."

"What was it?"

Haku finished the tea, poured it into a small wooden cup, and handed it to Zabuza. "He said that we should not attack Tazuna-san and that Gato is planning to betray and kill us rather than give us what he promised."

Zabuza took the cup and sipped it slowly as he thought. "Did he tell you how he knew _that_?"

"No."

"If he's from the Leaf, I doubt we can trust him anyway, it's his job to protect the old man… Besides, we're going to kill Gato as soon as this job is over, regardless of whether or not he pays us. We'll take our pay and more before we leave this place."

Haku bit his lower lip nervously. "He defeated me. I tried to attack him when it became clear that he would be our enemy in the near future. He could have killed me, but didn't." Zabuza scowled at the news and Haku lowered his head in shame, but still asked, "Do we really need to attack them? This new one makes our situation more difficult. We could simply leave now…"

"Haku," Zabuza growled, "this isn't just for the money anymore. Being taken down by that little woman and those three brats was an insult I can't let go unanswered… if we don't finish this job, we'll have trouble getting more work when it becomes known that we were beaten by a bunch of nobodies." He took another sip of his tea and said, "Next time you fight this 'blond ninja' don't take him so lightly. If you use _that_ ability from the beginning, no one can stop you."

Haku bobbed his head. He was doubtful of that, but he couldn't question Zabuza without appearing weak. "Yes, of course you're right. Forgive me."

Zabuza grinned into his tea and then drained the remainder. "Tomorrow we'll finish things here and then move on. A few more jobs like this one and we'll be close to realizing my goal. I won't back down now."

ooo

Naruto sighed as he watched Haku walk away. He'd gotten no less than he'd expected, but far less than he'd hoped for.

He brought his fingers together and created another clone to follow after the dark haired ninja. If nothing else, knowing where Zabuza and Haku were would make it that much easier to keep tabs on them. If worse came to worse, he could even try attacking them at their hideout rather than letting them get anywhere close to Team Eight.

He hoped he wouldn't need to. It would be much easier if they would just walk away or at least if Haku would. If he was allowed to change his fate, they deserved the same opportunity.

Naruto had left a clone watching over Hinata, so instead of going back to see her, he headed for town. A part of him wouldn't have minded watching her train, but her kinaki genkai made that dangerous. Even if he saw her start to activate it, he wouldn't be able to get out of her vision's range before she could spot him. A shadow clone, on the other hand, could just release itself and be gone.

As he moved through the trees on his way to town he couldn't help but think how odd it was that two different teams had been given this mission and both had ended up doing tree climbing training. Maybe it _was_ fate, just like maybe it was fate that he and Haku would have to fight each other… or maybe it was simply because tree climbing was great training for young genin and both Kurenai and Kakashi knew it.

From the looks of three of the trees were Hinata and Haku had been picking herbs, Kiba and Shino had also survived the fight with Zabuza and were also doing the training, or had been, at least. He didn't know which tree belonged to whom, but none of them were near the top yet. A childish part of Naruto was happy to find that he and his teammates appeared to have mastered the training quicker than Team Eight was – if memory served, he and Sasuke would have been near the top by this point and Sakura would have already been done with the training. If the Kiba from the future was around, Naruto would have had great fun pointing this fact out. Of course if he was being fair he'd have to admit that it was possible that Team Eight had started their training later… but with Kiba, he'd probably have skipped fair and just enjoyed a good laugh at his friend's expense since Kiba would have done the same if the situation was reversed.

Since Hinata, Kiba, Shino, and Haku all seemed to be alive and well for the moment, it was probably Kurenai or Tazuna who had left all the blood on the grass and Naruto wanted to know which one it was. Team Eight should have gone back to Konoha if Tazuna had been killed, since the mission would technically have been over, and they _definitely_ should have if Kurenai had been killed – never mind that they wouldn't have been doing tree climbing without her teaching them how to do it – so it wasn't a question of anyone being killed, but certainly someone had been hurt badly in the fight and chances were it wasn't Zabuza.

When his team had done this mission, Kakashi had realized that Zabuza would return and had set his team to training with a certain amount of urgency. However, from the looks of their training, Hinata, Shino, and Kiba weren't exactly pushing themselves as hard as three people who were worried about the imminent return of a man who had probably nearly killed them. This meant that they either still thought Zabuza was dead or had had a different experience at the lake that led them to believe that there wasn't an imminent threat. Kurenai was smart, but she was also a new jounin at this point in her life. It was possible that she didn't fully realize the danger her team was in. And if they didn't know what was coming, they and Tazuna wouldn't stand a chance.

It only took him a few minutes to reach the village and once he was there he found things were much easier to remember in the light, even if they still looked different from the way he remembered them. Seeing the town once again freshened his notoriously poor memory, if only slightly, and it wasn't long before he managed to figure out where Tazuna's house was.

The house was little more than a large shack compared to what it was later after it and every other home on the island had been given a facelift from the economic resurgence that accompanied the completion of the Great Naruto Bridge. The paint on the shingled house was spotty after years of peeling under the harsh seaside weather and there were several areas where the boards were cracked and falling apart. The roof looked like it had been patched a few times, but not by the expert hands of a master bridge builder… probably Inari's mother (whose name Naruto couldn't recall) or Inari himself had been forced to make the repairs while Tazuna was away from town or working on the bridge.

From the large branch of the tree on which he stood, Naruto could see little Inari sitting on the walkway that surrounded the house looking down into the water. The boy was barely a shadow of the strong man he'd become, the man who would be the leader of the village. From the reports Naruto had read after the incident, it had taken four Sound ninja to take him down even though he was only a fisherman, but right now he was just a little boy who looked a bit depressed and lonely.

It had occurred to Naruto previously that his life had impacted many people during his random missions and journeys, but it had never with such force until that moment as he stood there watching Inari. Because things were happening differently –his team not getting the mission to guard Tazuna, for instance – some people might never meet him, important people (or at least important to their little villages and friends) like Inari could end up being completely different without meeting him. He'd badgered Inari out of his depression, taking the little boy's crying and anger as personal insults, but he wouldn't be there to do that this time. Would Inari still become the person he had in the future or would he remain the pathetic little boy who'd given up hope that he looked like right now?

Those were questions he would have to worry about later. He didn't have a good excuse to go and speak to Inari at the moment and even if he did, he couldn't afford to risk getting caught. He turned his attention away from the little boy and watched the house for a long time trying to see some sort of sign that Kiba, Shino, or Kurenai was inside.

After almost an hour, his efforts were rewarded when Kiba stepped outside, Akamaru barking happily and running circles around his master's feet, and headed towards the woods where he would probably be meeting up with Hinata. Shino appeared a moment later with Tazuna and Kurenai who leaned heavily on a crutch and was looking worse than Naruto had ever seen her. Her hair was messy and even from the distance appeared greasy and dirty, her face was devoid of its usual makeup, and her skin was pale and sickly looking. Kurenai said something to the bug user and the bridge builder which caused Tazuna to complain and look annoyed while Shino nodded in understanding and then the two set off in the direction of the bridge.

Naruto created two more shadow clones and had one instantly release himself so that the clone watching over Hinata would know that Kiba seemed to be on his way. The remaining clone was left to watch the house while he followed after Tazuna since the bridge builder was the one who would be attacked at some point.

He followed Shino and Tazuna from the trees for as long as he could, but the village was built on a promontory so it wasn't long before the trees ended while the village continued a bit farther. At this point, he had no choice but to enter the village and continue to shadow them. It was dangerous for him to be seen in the village where his blond hair and orange clothing would stand out, but a simple jutsu removed that danger almost completely.

"Henge," he whispered as he brought his fingers together to form the proper seals.

Instantly he was tall and tan with broad shoulders and strong arms, his hair was black and a little longer though it retained its spikiness so as to look windswept – or at least he hoped it would look windswept – while his clothing became a dark shirt and dirty brown pants. It was the basic appearance of many of the fishermen he'd seen both since arriving on the coast in this timeline and in his original life. He hoped it would be nondescript enough that he could move about without calling attention to himself. In a small village like this one, chances were he'd be quickly identified as a newcomer to town, but so long as he wasn't questioned too vigorously and wasn't around Akamaru or Kiba his disguise would probably be enough.

He hurried out of the woods and made his way through the twisting turning paths of the village towards the incomplete Great Naruto Bridge… that, he supposed, wouldn't ever actually _be_ the Great Naruto Bridge.

That was a pity. The simple truth of the matter was that there would probably never be a better name for a bridge.

ooo

"Thanks for coming with me," Sakura said quietly as she and Sasuke walked down the hall towards Naruto's apartment door. They'd finished their mission and training time with Kakashi earlier and – at Sakura's suggestion – were now on their way to pay a visit to their sick teammate. Sasuke hadn't talked to her much during their mission nor on the way to the apartment building, but he'd come and that was an improvement over the relationship they'd had up until this point. It _appeared_ that Naruto had been right about backing off and just trying to be his friend. Sasuke seemed to tolerate her much more than he had when she tried to talk to him at the Academy.

"I didn't have anything else to do," Sasuke replied with a sigh, examining the halls' peeling wallpaper so he would have something to do besides look at her.

"You could have gone to the training grounds," Sakura pointed out.

"I'll go later, this won't take long anyway."

"Would you like some company?" She'd asked him several times in the last week if she could come with him, but he'd never agreed. She supposed that, just as she'd found it unlike that Naruto only wanted to have a meal as friends and was not secretly trying to make it into a date, Sasuke found it difficult to believe that she wanted to train with him as friends and nothing more. Still, he didn't seem irritated when he said 'no,' so if nothing else, at least she wasn't annoying him as much anymore.

Sasuke shook his head. "Sorry, I don't have time to look after you… to…day…" He stopped in his tracks as the color drained from his face, his eyes widening in shock and some other emotion that Sakura couldn't quite read.

"Sasuke-kun? Are you alright?" she asked, gently touching his shoulder.

Sasuke gave himself a little shake and took a deep breath. "I'm fine," he told her and then took another calming breath. "If you want, I'll help you with that jutsu we worked on yesterday."

Sakura stared at him in confusion, still stuck on the strange look on his face that had appeared and then vanished. She had no way of knowing that Sasuke had just quoted words straight out of the mouth of the one person he truly hated, but that didn't really matter once her brain registered the words he'd spoken.

"Really?!?" she asked in a voice that was nearly a squeal. Despite her efforts to just try to be a friend, old instincts died hard.

Sasuke treated her to something that could almost be called a smile, sort of a tiny turning up of the corners of his lips, and nodded his head once. "It's not a date," he said as they reached the right door.

"Of course not," Sakura agreed, "I just want to be strong enough to help you in anyway you need me to… I just want to be your friend."

Sasuke gave her a sharp look, but rather than respond he simply reached out and knocked on the door.

A tired and sickly looking Naruto answered the door almost immediately. "Hey," he croaked, stepping aside to let them through and revealing Kakashi leaning against the wall on the other side of the room, "looks like the gang's all here."

Naruto seemed to be a lot better than he had been on the morning he'd first been excused, but was still not his normal self. He looked exhausted, was sweating profusely, and made two trips to the bathroom where they could hear him retching.

Sakura was glad that she'd had a good sized lunch because she certainly wouldn't be in the mood for food after listening to Naruto try to puke.

With Naruto still so sick, Sakura, Sasuke, and Kakashi didn't stay long. As they left, Naruto told the jounin that he didn't think he'd be much better anytime soon and asked if he could just have the next couple of days off.

Kakashi shrugged in his typical nonchalant way and – in a voice that made Sakura think he was probably at least partly joking – said it was better than having Naruto screw up the missions by throwing up on their objectives. For the briefest of seconds, as the jounin turned around, Sakura thought she saw relief flood Naruto's face, but then it was gone as if it had never been there… or perhaps it was only relief that he would not have to be sick on a mission.

Sakura was sorry that Naruto was still sick, but at the same time didn't mind getting Sasuke all to herself for a few more days. Once her blond teammate was feeling better she vowed to thank him for his advice about Sasuke by treating him to bowl of Ichiraku ramen… maybe they could even get Sasuke to join them.

ooo

Naruto quickly discovered that his concerns about his disguise were unfounded. No one questioned him, no one looked twice at him – in fact, most people didn't look at him or speak in his presence at all. He'd almost forgotten how bad things were in the little village that Gato ruled over with an iron fist. The people were scared and their fear made them timid even when there was no danger. The thing that stood out about him wasn't his attire or his appearance, but that he didn't keep his head bowed and his eyes on the ground. Fortunately with everyone else avoiding eye contract, no one seemed to notice that he wasn't walking about like a defeated man.

Tazuna and Shino were easy enough to follow from a distance. Tazuna's grey hair was fairly distinct and the villagers respected him enough to step aside and let him pass. Shino, despite how quiet and almost forgettable he tended to be, also stood out from those around him with his poofy hair and non-fisherman clothing and the villagers also gave him a wide berth the moment they spotted the Leaf hitai-ate marking him as a ninja. The bug user walked calmly next to the bridge builder, neither turning his head to the right or left, with his hands at his sides, probably depositing some of his Kikaichu bugs to serve as sentries.

Naruto made sure to move into the small alleyways to help avoid being marked by any of the insects (and just to keep from having them crawling on him). He wasn't completely sure if the bugs would be able to detect the chakra he was using to disguise himself, but he wouldn't put it past them and didn't want to find out for sure by being discovered. This meant that he couldn't see Shino or Tazuna anymore, but that was hardly a problem since he knew where they were going. After a few minutes he worked his way back to the main street and from there it was only a short walk to the edge of both the village and the island.

The bridge was as beautiful and impressive as ever with its great stone supports rising out of the ocean and fog blocking the view of the other shore making it seem as if the bridge simply ran on forever. Naruto had always wondered, but never asked, how Tazuna had managed to get the materials to build the road across the sea when he was a fairly poor man living in an even poorer village. Regardless of where the supplies had come from, the bridge was amazing and Naruto was happy to see it standing once again.

"It's a fool's dream," a man whispered under his breath just loud enough for Naruto to overhear him. Naruto glanced over his shoulder to find an elderly-looking fisherman with a dark headband holding back his spiky grey hair. The man looked down the bridge and then his eyes fell to the ground as he shook his head. "It'll be the death of us all if Tazuna doesn't give it up."

Naruto turned back to the bridge. "If you're not going to bother living, why are you so afraid to die?" he growled. "At least old man Tazuna isn't a sniveling coward."

"Who are _you_ to talk?" the old man snarled. "I don't see you doing anything to help him!" Naruto glanced at him once more and the fisherman took a step back, his eyes widening. "Do I know you?" he asked, the anger instantly gone from his voice.

"No," Naruto replied, "You've never seen me before and probably won't ever again. I'm just passing through."

"Well, I'd hurry up if I were you. This town isn't safe anymore."

Naruto shook his head and almost smiled. "You haven't seen anything yet."

The old man shrugged giving Naruto another odd look as if trying to place the face that the young ninja had invented for himself and then hurried on his way, not wanting to be seen near the bridge or talking with a stranger. Naruto spent part of the day watching out for trouble from a nearby roof and then wandered down to the end of the bridge by walking upside down underneath it so he could over hear what was happening. From the sounds of things, it seemed that Tazuna was having considerable difficulty keeping his workers from abandoning him.

The clone he'd left watching Hinata had released himself once she and Kiba had returned to the village and started towards the bridge to let him know that they were on their way. From the memories he'd received, it seemed that Hinata had begun making considerable headway when it came to the tree climbing, but had lost ground after Kiba arrived.

Naruto smiled at the memory of her barely managing half what she'd been able to do before just because of the added pressure of Kiba's presence. It was almost funny that someone with as much potential as her was struggling with something that she should have naturally been great at. Everything came back to confidence with Hinata, it seemed, but that was okay. Once he'd gotten her team through this mission, he would do what he could to build her up until she could stand on her own. She'd managed it in the future without him, how hard could it be for her to get there with his help?

As evening arrived, he followed Team Eight and Tazuna back into town until they arrived safely at Tazuna's house. While heading back to the forest so he could rest and relax for a few hours, he began to grow nervous. Zabuza would be returning soon, he was sure of it. It was hard to remember the exact timeframe from the time he'd had this mission, but he doubted Team Eight had more than two or three days before the missing-nin attacked again.

Haku would have already delivered the message about the double-cross to Zabuza, but Naruto doubted that would be enough to stop him. He probably should have just followed Haku back to the hideout and fought Zabuza there, but he'd wanted to at least allow the two of them the chance to walk away and save themselves. It would have been more reassuring if Haku had been a little more open to either switching sides or at least trying to talk Zabuza out of the fight, but there hadn't been much chance of that from the start. Haku would follow Zabuza to hell and back no matter what, he could remember that much of his time on the mission perfectly.

The way things stood now, Naruto only a couple of options available to him. He could go after Zabuza and Haku in their hideout or ambush them when they headed towards the bridge, though he wasn't totally sure he could beat both of them at the same time – one at a time wouldn't be _too_ hard, but two at once would be difficult. He could also simply alert Kurenai about the danger – even if he wore a disguise, Kiba and Akamaru would be able to smell him through it or Hinata would simply be able to see through it – but it would be up to her to believe him after realizing who he was. He could also wait for the bridge battle and try to help Team Eight from a distance, hoping they were strong enough to survive without his direct assistance. Or he could directly assist them in the battle and completely prove that he wasn't who he was supposed to be.

There were dangers in all of his choices, both to himself and to his friends. Even as he settled in amongst the tree branches in a spot that gave him a decent view of Tazuna's house, he still had no idea what he was going to do. As usual, it seemed that he would have to make it up as he went along.

Fortunately he just had to stay awake a little longer, ten or fifteen hours at the most, after that he would know if Zabuza was going to attack the following day or not. He could handle that. He'd stayed awake for much longer as an adult. He would just have to get some extra sleep once he got back to Konoha to make up for it.

Naruto let his eyes drift up to the stars and blinked slowly, his eyelids seemed to seal together the moment they touched. With considerable effort, he forced them back open. He couldn't fall asleep, not yet! If he did… he couldn't remember what would happen if he did, but it wouldn't be good.

The next time he blinked, his eyes did not open. A twelve year old body just wasn't as capable of staving off sleep as an adult's.

ooo

Hinata rose early the next morning, as had been her custom since childhood, quickly dressed, and then hurried towards the front door to go continue her training before Kiba and Shino arrived so that they wouldn't see how slowly she was improving. Usually she was up while it was still dark out, but this morning the sun was already beginning to slowly rise from the sea on the horizon. Because she'd foolishly overslept, she wouldn't have as long to herself as normal, but every little bit helped.

"Hinata?" a soft voice called to her from behind.

The young kunoichi gasped and spun around to find Kurenai sitting in the semi-dark with a steaming cup of tea in her hand. The dark haired jounin was looking remarkably better than she had the last several days. Her hair was still wet from having been washed and even in the dim light Hinata could see that Kurenai was wearing makeup for the first time since her injury. Hinata walked over to the table and could smell a strange mixture of tea, saltwater, and shampoo coming from her sensei.

"You're up early," Kurenai noted.

"I, um, wanted to go work on the t-tree climbing."

Kurenai smiled, took another sip of her tea, and then shook her head. "I'd rather you stayed here for now. I'm going to go down to the bridge with Tazuna-san today and I want all three of you to come with me. Once we've taken a look around, I'll send two of you back to train while the other remains with me and then you'll rotate out as the day goes on."

Hinata was disappointed for a moment, but pushed the feeling away. It wasn't proper to disagree with her superiors or to feel disappointment that she would be training with one of her teammates. It did, however, mean that she probably wouldn't get as much done as she would have when she didn't have to worry about screwing up in front of people whose respect she wanted to earn. "O-okay."

Kurenai stood, leaning heavily on the crutch that had been resting against the back of her chair, reached out and put a hand on her student's shoulder and smiled. "You're becoming a very good kunoichi, Hinata. Don't think so hard about the tree climbing, just do it. You have excellent chakra control already. You just have to have the confidence to use it. Later today, I'll give you a few more pointers and we'll see if we can't get you all the way to the top."

Hinata nodded silently, not trusting herself to open her mouth. Her eyes unconsciously shifted to the crutch that was holding Kurenai up.

Kurenai chuckled and patted Hinata on the head affectionately as she stopped leaning on the crutch and set it aside. "Don't let the crutch fool you, I'm feeling a lot better. I don't even need it anymore. I'm only keeping it around so I won't have to do any heavy lifting for Tazuna-san today."

Hinata wasn't convinced, but she nodded anyway and went into the kitchen to make herself some tea and a small breakfast.

Kurenai smiled until Hinata's back was turned, but then winced and gently rubbed her side as she repositioned the crutch and sagged against it. "Damn," she muttered into her tea cup so that she wouldn't be overheard before slowly easing herself back into her chair.

ooo

Gato relaxed on a comfortable – and expensive – couch and smiled cruelly as he adjusted his dark glasses and then brought a walky-talky to his mouth. "Is the ambush ready yet?" he demanded.

There was an audible snort on the other end and then Zabuza's voice replied, "They'll be dead the moment they show up."

"I don't care about the ninja, the old man is the only one that matters. Do you understand me?"

The only answer Gato received was the loud thud of headset on the other side falling to the ground. Gato scowled and then tossed the walky-talky away. "Those two are getting on my nerves," he muttered to himself. For a moment he brooded silently and then he turned to his two ever-present bodyguards. "Waraji, Zori, I think it's time we took matters into our own hands."

The two men smirked almost gleefully. They were killers, both of them, and they hated not being allowed to use the swords strapped to their sides. Gato knew it and he knew how to use them, just as he knew how to use most everyone else. He simply had to wait for the right moment and then unleash them against enemies that they could handle – which meant they would never be sent against experienced ninja unless they were part of a large mob.

"Go to the bridge builder's house and bring a hostage… one is all you need. After that, meet me at the bridge. If Zabuza manages to keep up his end of the bargain, it will be time to rid ourselves of him and that brat. If he fails, it will be time to make sure the bridge builder is taken care of, no matter what."

Waraji and Zori nodded and hurried from the room, practically skipping with excitement now that they were finally allowed to do the one thing they truly loved.

Gato ignored them as they left, instead staring out the window and pressing his finger tips together as he licked his lips in anticipation. This was it. After today, the island would be his. Within a year he wouldn't just control the country's daimyo, he would _be_ the daimyo!

ooo

Zabuza brought his foot down on the headset where he could still hear Gato's angry voice squawking at him and looked up at the unfinished end of the bridge from the small boat he and Haku were standing in. Rebar stuck out from the concrete like fingers stretching towards the distant shore, trying to reach its goal. A thin smile played across his lips beneath his mask, the bridge would fail in its quest, but _he_ would not.

"Haku, let's enjoy ourselves."

"And Gato?" the boy asked as he too looked up. From the bridge, they could hear the few remaining workers greeting each other as they arrived.

"Whether he pays us or not, he'll be dead before sunset."

Haku lifted his mask to his face and secured it in place. "An excellent plan, Zabuza-san."

ooo

In the branches of a tree not far from Tazuna's house, Naruto was lost in a deep dreamless sleep, completely unaware of the events slowly unfolding beneath him.

o

o

A/N: Sorry about the delay here. I got distracted by some real life stuff – stupid school, who needs it? – and didn't have time to make the corrections that I needed to put in here. Hopefully the next chapter will be out before or at least _by_ Friday. After that, I think I'll actually have to slow to the once a week updates that I've been meaning to do since the very beginning… and this time I really mean it!

…maybe…

So, the next chapter will finally have some action… lots of action. In fact, it's just about all action. Sorry it took a while, but short of just going, Naruto did nothing all day except spy on people and then fall asleep, then he woke up the next day and started fighting… I just couldn't leave out this second filler chapter. I tried, I really did, but while I could cut down on some parts, the majority of the scenes felt like they needed to remain for one reason or another (or else I just liked them and didn't want to cut them).


	11. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

o

Kiba knew that he wasn't always the brightest ninja in the whole world, he wasn't as dumb as Naruto, of course, but he was no egghead like Haruno Sakura. He also wasn't the strongest ninja, though he could certainly hold his own against most anyone roughly his age. There were, in fact, many areas where he wasn't the cream of the crop, but when it came to his sense of smell, he was second to none among his peers.

Part of it was breeding, naturally. His family was well known for its use of nindogs and somewhere along the way they had picked up and developed a few dog-like traits. Nearly everyone in his family had at least slightly enlarged canine teeth as well as thick, unruly hair that was very similar to dog hair and all of them had a sense of smell that was far more sensitive than that of most other humans. They weren't quite as good as their dogs yet, but since dogs had noses that were well over a hundred thousand times more sensitive than the average humans, that was to be expected.

It didn't take a dog's nose to smell blood and water in the air as Team Eight reached the bridge. He would have smelled it earlier, but the wind had been blowing in a different direction until that moment.

"Something's wrong, sensei," Kiba whispered as his right hand dipped into his kunai holster.

Kurenai and the others stopped, and Tazuna squinted his eyes as he looked down towards the far end of the bridge. "Wha-what the hell," he whispered and then, without warning, dashed ahead of the group.

Team Eight caught up with him just as he reached one of the five bodies lying on the ground. "Amachi, w-what happened?" Tazuna asked as Kurenai – leaning heavily on her crutch – reached them.

"A-a monster," the young, dark haired man whispered and then his strength failed him and he collapsed, either dead or unconscious.

"A monster?" Kurenai repeated, her red eyes scanning the area as a feeling of dread began to swell inside her injured body.

ooo

"Inari, come help me with the dishes," Tsunami's voice could be heard calling from inside the house as the two men reached the door.

"Oka-ay, just let me clean something up and I'll be down," the little boy's equally loud voice replied. The men chuckled as their thumbs pressed against the hilts of their swords.

"Waraji," Zori grinned with a mock bow of his head, "after you."

Waraji's sword slipped from its sheath, made six diagonal strikes against the aged wood of the door and wall, and then was back in its sheath before the wall came crashing in.

The dark haired woman, Tsunami, whirled at the noise, her eyes wide with fear and a dish rag hanging limply in her hand.

"You Tazuna's daughter, right?" Zori asked. She didn't reply, but it no answer was really needed, she was in Tazuna's house, doing chores, and the old man couldn't afford a maid. There was no doubt about her identity. "Our employer would like a _word_ with the old man and he wants you to come with us so we have your father's attention."

Still she didn't reply or even move.

Waraji, always the short tempered one, crossed the room and kicked the table she was standing next to, sending it crashing on its side and shattering the clean dishes on the floor as Tsunami jumped out of the way. She backed away from his towering form until her back was against the cabinets.

"Didn't you hear him?" he demanded. "You're coming with us."

At that moment, Inari rushed down the stairs, having heard the noise from his room. "Mom!" he cried before he even realized that there were two other people in the house.

"What do you want, kid?" Zori growled as he spun on his heel towards the boy.

"Inari, get out of here! Run away!" Tsunami cried out.

"Do we take him too?" Waraji asked with a cruel smile at the boy.

"Gato-sama said we only need _one_ hostage," Zori reminded him.

At the word 'hostage,' Inari cringed and hid halfway behind the corner of the wall, fearful tears welling up in his eyes as a cold sweat ran down his spine.

"Then," Waraji chuckled as he menacingly began to unsheathe his sword, "should I take his head in one swing or let him bleed out slowly?"

Inari was nothing more than one eye peeking around the corner by this point, his little legs shaking and paralyzing terror written all over his nearly hidden face. Waraji wondered if the boy would pee his pants before the blade even touched him… it would be fun to find out.

"Wait!!" cried Tsunami as she jumped to her feet. The threat to her son had wakened her from her fear. The two men turned towards her, perplexed. "You want a hostage, right? Well, if you touch one hair on his head, I will bite off my tongue and kill myself before you even get me out of the house."

The tone of her voice left no doubt that she was dead serious.

Zori snorted and brushed his long hair over his shoulder. "Thank your mom, kid. She just saved your life."

"Damn," Waraji grumbled as his sword slid back into its sheath with a soft click, "I wanted to cut something."

Inari crumpled to the ground and sobbed uncontrollably.

"Just give it a rest," Zori sighed. "You got to cut up lots of stuff on the way over here. Grab her and let's get going."

Inari could hear them leaving though he couldn't even bring himself to take one last look at his mother. "Mom," he whispered to himself, "I'm sorry… I'm so sorry… I can't protect you. I'm just a weak kid… I don't want to die. I'm so sorry … so sorry…"

_"Maybe he is just waiting for you to be in need of protection… instead of living in fear all the time."_

_"If it's truly precious, even if you lose your life, you must protect it with these two hands."_

Inari looked down at his trembling hands until a tear drop rolled down his nose and splashed in his palm. He was always so scared, so weak… so pathetic. He didn't want to move from where he was, but he didn't want to be scared anymore. He didn't want to go after the scary men who had invaded his home, but he couldn't stand to be weak anymore. There was no way he'd be so pathetic as to let them take his mother, the woman _that_ man had loved even more than the village… that man who had once been… no, that man who _was_ his father.

This time, Inari vowed, he was going to live in a way that honored his father.

He rose to his feet, his hands were sweaty and still trembling, but now with a new emotion. He stared at the hole in the wall that the men had taken his mother through, he wanted to throw up, but his fear – powerful as it was – was quickly being pushed back by the anger that was swelling within him.

_'Can I do it, Dad? Can I be strong… like you?' _he asked as he crossed the room and paused at the hole before stepping through. _'Please…protect me and help me protect mom with these two hands!'_

Only a few meters away, Waraji and Zori pushed Tsunami along. "Seeing that pretty skin makes me want to… cut it!" Waraji told her just loud enough for Inari to hear.

"Stop!" the little boy yelled as he stepped out onto the walkway.

All three adults looked back at him in surprise.

"Inari!" Tsunami cried in alarm.

ooo

The yelling from the village below woke Naruto from his slumber, though his body greatly protested it. Even after getting several hours more sleep than he normally needed, his body was still so tired. Perhaps it was because this body was unaccustomed to the long hours that his adult body had been able to keep, or maybe it was that his chakra supply wasn't nearly what it had been when he was older, or maybe it was just that twelve year olds needed more sleep because their bodies were still growing. Whatever the reason, Naruto still felt physically exhausted, but his brain refused to allow his body to return to its slumber.

The first thing he noticed as his eyes opened was that it was far brighter out than it seemed like it should have been. It only took a second for him to realize that this was because he'd slept more than he should have… actually, he shouldn't have _slept_ at all, but those two thoughts quickly were pushed aside when he realized what it was that had woken him.

Inari was staring down two men armed with swords who appeared to be abducting a young, dark haired woman. Up until that second, Naruto had completely forgotten about Tazuna's house being attacked, but now that he remembered it, he also remembered what it meant. Not only was Inari's mother being kidnapped, but the bridge was under attack by Zabuza and Haku.

"Of all the days to sleep in!" Naruto cursed as he jumped to his feet, his fatigue instantly forgotten as adrenaline rushed through his system. He brought his hands together and called out, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" and then both Naruto's yelled "Henge!" as they transformed into the fisherman disguise from the previous day.

The clone took off in the direction of Inari's house while the real Naruto hurried towards the bridge. He'd arrived in just in the nick of time when it was Team Seven on the bridge, hopefully he could pull the feat off twice.

ooo

Kurenai knew that the worst possible situation had fallen upon her team when the fog came up and swirled around them, thicker even than what they'd seen at the lake. Kiba and Shino seemed to recognize the fog as well as they both pulled in close around Tazuna, protecting him as best their small bodies could manage, and drew kunai into shaking hands.

"What the hell is this?" Kiba whispered. "That guy's dead!"

"Other people can use that technique as well," Shino pointed out, "but it is a strange coincidence to run into it again so soon."

For a moment the bridge was totally silent, even the sounds of the sea below them seemed to have been blocked by the thick fog. In the silence, Kurenai offered up a small prayer to whatever gods might be listening, that Shino was right and this was simply another ninja using Kirigakure no Jutsu or better yet, that it was some sort of freak weather phenomenon caused by the sea. Sadly, her prayers went unanswered.

"Hmm, still shaking, aren't they… poor kids," Zabuza's disembodied voice chuckled from the mist. "What worthless excuses for shinobi!" At that, nearly a dozen Zabuzas appeared from within the fog each with a zanbato in his hand, surrounding the group.

"When I give the signal, you three are going to take Tazuna and make a break for it. I'll do my best to cover you," Kurenai whispered to her students.

Hinata gasped in alarm and started to stammer something.

"We aren't leaving you here, sensei," Kiba growled, essentially translating what Hinata was trying to say. Despite his brave declaration, his voice trembled while his wide eyes stared at the water clones surrounding them.

"This isn't a debate," Kurenai snapped, not taking her eyes off of the water clones. "I'm giving you an order, follow it!"

"No," Kiba replied, his voice growing more firm. "Put a reprimand in your report when we get back to Konoha, but I'm not leaving."

"Nor I," Shino added quietly.

"M-me n-neither, Kurenai-sensei," Hinata agreed as well.

Kurenai opened her mouth, but wasn't sure what to say to them at this point. They were all going to die, of that she was certain. At full strength, she and her genin had nearly been overwhelmed by an overconfident Zabuza. This Zabuza wouldn't make the same mistakes and, even if he did, Kurenai was no where near full strength. Maybe if her genin and Tazuna had made a break for it, she could have stalled him long enough for them to escape, but their reckless bravery was going to seal their fates… hers had been sealed from the moment Zabuza somehow returned from the dead.

So focused was she on the impending death that was coming to those she'd been charged with training and protecting that she missed the first attack. The sound of falling water woke her from her thoughts just in time to see the second volley of kunai fly away from Kiba and Shino, eliminating the final four clones.

Their aim was far better than it had been when they fought Zabuza the first time and their speed had increased as well. They'd either been doing more than just the tree climbing exercise she'd given them or else they'd just been exceptionally nervous during the first battle. Even so, their improvement was remarkable.

"Ho ho ho," Zabuza chuckled from within the mist, "somebody's been practicing. Looks like you brats realized my clones are all pretty weak when there's that many of them."

The mist in front of them cleared a little as Zabuza and a small, masked ninja stepped into sight.

Kurenai had never seen the masked ninja before, but from the sound of Kiba's sudden intake of breath, her genin recognized him. It only took her a second to realize that this must be the boy who had shown up after their first fight with Zabuza.

"Bastard," Kiba growled as he pointed an accusing finger at the other ninja, "you said you were a Hunter-nin!"

"You're an idiot if you believe everything you're told, especially by someone you wouldn't know from the Mizukage," Zabuza snorted. "A real ninja would know better."

Kiba yelled something back at their enemy, but Kurenai didn't bother listening to it. There had to be a way to get her team out of this situation. She was dead, of course, nothing short of a bolt of lightening striking Zabuza in the next minute or so would save her, but she could accept that so long as her three charges somehow managed to escape – preferably with Tazuna, though that might be asking more of them than they could handle. The only problem was: how to separate them from herself so they didn't get caught up in the short (and mostly likely one-sided) battle between her and Zabuza. If only they'd retreated when she told them to she could have kept Zabuza's attention on herself long enough for them to… what? Live another few hours, if that, before he tracked them down? Maybe it was for the best that they were too foolhardy to know how outmatched they were or maybe they already knew and had reached the same conclusion she had: running would be futile.

"Kiba, Shino," she whispered just loud enough to be overheard by Zabuza and Haku if the two ninja were interested in listening in. "When I give you the signal, the two of you are going to rush the kid in the mask, I'll handle Zabuza." She glanced at Hinata who was fidgeting nervously and trying to appear braver than she no doubt felt. "Hinata, you do your best to cover Tazuna-san and use your Byakugan to keep an eye on the two of them in the mist."

Tazuna took a hesitant step back and looked around in terrified awe. "I'm sorry, Tazuna-san, but I don't think we'll be able to protect you very well while we fight them. Hinata can at least try to keep you safe, but she'll have to watch our backs as well, so her attention will be divided. If you run, it will only call attention to yourself, but if you get behind some of these crates and hide… you might be safe until things are decided one way or another."

The old man glanced at the crates she indicated and sighed. "You just want me to hide until they finish you off, is that it?"

"If things go badly… yes. I doubt you could make it home before they caught up with you anyway and if you stay here your family might be spared."

Tazuna sighed and then tilted his head back to look towards the heavens that were hidden somewhere beyond the mist. "_Super_."

"S-sensei, what about—" Hinata started to ask, but Kurenai cut her off before she could finish.

"I'll be fine," she said as she let out a slow breath and then eased the crutch from under her arm and tossed it aside.

It hurt more than she'd thought it would. Her wounded flank wasn't even close to healed and she was sure that the moment she stretched herself it would open up again. If she had any hope of survival, she might have been worried, but all she could do now was pray that the masked ninja would be unable to last against the combined efforts of Kiba, Shino, and Akamaru for as long as she could last against Zabuza. It was a gamble, as she had no idea how skilled he or she was, but it was all she really had. With any luck, they would have a couple of minutes head start before she fell and maybe Zabuza would be satisfied with her death and wouldn't bother with the rest of her team…

It wasn't likely, but they had better odds of survival than trying to fight along side her again.

Kurenai's eyes locked onto Zabuza as she took a deep breath, her muscles tightening in anticipation of the fight she was about to launch herself into.

"You hear that, Haku," the lanky ninja chuckled, "those little brats want to play with you."

"Will you need help with the woman?" Haku asked.

Zabuza snorted, "She won't last a minute against me unless I take my time."

The smaller ninja bowed its head. "Then I ask that you leave the rest of them to me."

"You're being greedy again, but it's fine with me. Three babies and a dog aren't even worth my attention." Zabuza tilted his head until his neck popped and then pulled at the strap across his chest, freeing his monstrous sword which he lifted single handedly over his shoulder and leveled at Kurenai. "Whenever you're ready, little girl."

"Now," Kurenai whispered as she threw herself forward, a kunai already in her clenched fist and her mind trying to block out the pain that shot through her as her side opened up again.

ooo

Waraji almost laughed, "It's that kid again…"

Inari swallowed hard, almost feeling his resolve waver under the gaze of the three adults. "Get…" _'I can do it!'_ "…Get away from my mom!" And then, as though another presence had taken control of him, he screamed in rage and charged at the two full-grown men armed with swords.

"Geez," Waraji muttered, "what a stupid brat."

"Kill him," Zori said as his hand moved to his sword.

"Sure," Waraji replied, relieved that he could finally use his sword on something other than wood and a few stupid animals.

Tsunami screamed as the two men started their drawing motion. Their swords came up and began their arc downward.

Inari had just a split second to realize that he was going to die. _'Sorry, dad, I guess I wasn't strong enough.'_

Before the swords could reach him, however, a dark object fell from the sky, landing on the two men's heads and driving them into the wooden walkway.

Inari looked up at the back of a tall man with dark, spiky hair and broad shoulders and gasped. The man took a step back and waited as Waraji and Zori rose to their feet and glared at him. Inari ignored the two swordsmen, he couldn't tear his eyes off the newcomer.

"D-dad?" he whispered in disbelief. From behind, the man didn't look _exactly_ like his father, but the resemblance was enough that it could still, impossibly, be him.

The clone-Naruto stiffened, but didn't dare respond or turn around. For one thing, there were two very deadly men with extremely sharp swords standing in front of him, for another he didn't have the faintest idea how to dissuade the boy from foolishly believing him to be some sort of ghost nor did he have the time to think about such things.

Waraji and Zori twirled their swords expertly and advanced on him. They were beyond glib comments or threats. One look at their faces and there was no doubt as to their intentions, they planned on killing this man and anyone else they could find.

Waraji's sword came in from the side, Zori's from above, both arced perfectly towards the disguised Naruto, but in the blink of an eye, he was gone and their swords passed through air. Inari had never seen anything like it. Who could possibly move so fast he simply seemed to vanish like a ghost?

The clone reappeared behind Waraji and drove his toes into the back of the larger man's right knee. There was an audible cracking sound and Waraji cried out in pain as his leg gave out from under him. Before he could clutch at his injured joint or even really realize what had happened to him, the sharp edge of a knife was at his throat.

"If we were alone, you'd be dead right now. I would have killed you without thinking twice," the clone-Naruto whispered into the swordsman's ear. "The only reason you're still alive is because I don't want that little boy to have to watch you get your throat slit from ear to ear or your guts spill out all over the walkway after I cut you open, got it?" Waraji actually had the sense to nod his head ever so slightly. The clone smiled. "Good, thank the little boy that saved your life…"

Waraji swallowed hard and glanced out of the corner of his eye at Zori who was staring at the two of them in shock.

The blade pressed harder against his throat, its sharp edge drawing a small trickle of blood. "I wasn't joking, I really expect you to thank him."

"Th-thank you…"

"Thank you _what_?" The blade moved and Waraji could no doubt feel how easy it would be for his enemy to snuff out his life.

"Thankyouforsavingmylife!" he yelled quickly.

By this time, Zori had recovered from his shock. He snarled as he drove his blade at Naruto.

The clone didn't even think about his reaction. After all these years, manipulating chakra nature was almost as easy as taking a breath. Chakra was summoned into his hand and its nature was changed even as he made a slashing motion at Zori's sword, suddenly half of the katana's blade was flying off into the water. Wind chakra could cut like the sharpest of blades – sharper even – and the sword wasn't an extremely high quality one.

Zori stared stupidly at his broken weapon for a second before dropping it and turning to flee. A kunai flashed through the air and caught him in the back of the leg, just above the ankle. He took one more stumbling step, but then the injured leg gave out on him and he fell to the ground.

The clone brought the handle of his kunai down on the back of Waraji's head, knocking him out cold, and then did the same to Zori. Inari watched the whole thing in wonder, from his profile it seemed like the man's face probably wasn't that of his father, but at the same time there was a distinct resemblance. The appearance was close enough that Inari couldn't be sure that the differences weren't just his imagination or a trick of the light and the way the man's head was turned.

"Make sure you tie them up tightly," the clone-Naruto told Tsunami. "The village can decide what to do with them when this is all over." His eyes shifted towards Inari, though he didn't actually turn and face the little boy. "You did really good kid," he said with a smile, "really good. I was kind of worried, but you obviously didn't need me as much as I thought. You'll be a great leader for this village when the time comes. Just remember to grow up strong and good and stop moping all the time. You can't protect the things you love with your own hands unless you stop being scared and stand up for what you believe in, got it?"

Inari swallowed hard and nodded. Protect the things you love with your own hands… it was almost an exact quote of what his father used to say. Could it be? Had Hinata really been right all along? Had his father really just been waiting for him to need protection?

The clone-Naruto smiled at Inari and gave the little boy a wink. "Just make sure you're strong enough to take care of yourself from now on, okay? I can't protect you all the time!" And then he brought his hands together and vanished in a cloud of smoke.

Inari stared in stunned silence as the smoke quickly dissipated. The only signs there had even been anyone else on the walkway were the two unconscious men and the broken sword. He didn't move for several seconds until his mother walked over to him and wrapped her arms tightly around him as she cried in relief.

Even as he returned her hug, he couldn't completely convince himself of what had just happened. Had it really been his father? It _would_ be just like that man to be strong enough to protect the ones he loved even from beyond the grave and Hinata had said that he could just be waiting for the chance to do so… but it didn't seem possible. Maybe it didn't matter. Whether he was actually Kaiza or not, he'd said just what Inari could imagine Kaiza saying and that was enough.

_'Thank you dad,'_ he thought as he continued to hold his mother, _'I'll be strong from now on. You won't have to protect me anymore. Just watch me become the man you taught me to be.'_

ooo

Haku watched the two genin, Kiba and Shino, approach him and felt a strange flutter in his stomach. His old weakness was rising up again, just as it always seemed to when he was confronted with this sort of situation. He let out a slow breath, hoping to push the feeling away, but – predictably – it remained where it was.

It was a good thing Zabuza had most of his attention on the Leaf jounin, Kurenai, otherwise he might have been able to sense what Haku was feeling. Haku hated disappointing his master more than anything and if Zabuza had discerned what was happening within him, he would have ordered it gone and then Haku would have had no real choice.

As it was, he didn't have much of one anyway. Like it or not, he would probably have to kill these two boys, as well as Hinata, for no reason except that they were in Zabuza's way.

_Kindness_, Zabuza called it, a lack of desire to do harm. It had rested within Haku as far back as he could remember, even before Zabuza found him and gave him a reason to live. It held him back from being Zabuza's perfect weapon and his master reminded him – though usually without much anger – about it often.

He chanced a glance at Zabuza. Against more experienced shinobi, it could have been a fatal move, but against two young boys and a dog, Haku could get away with it.

Zabuza had deflected Kurenai's initial strike with ease and was now casually toying with her, swinging his sword about to force her to dodge, but not really trying to hit her with too much force. She was clearly far more injured than she'd let on, as Haku had predicted she would be. A wound like the one Zabuza had inflicted on her during their first meaning would not heal in less than a week, especially if there was only a relatively untrained medic-nin to treat it. The few times she attempted to swing her kunai at Zabuza were all short, tight movements with little follow through. Zabuza could kill her almost anytime he wanted and he clearly knew it too. His half-hearted attacks were only being used to prolong the fight so he could squeeze out every last drop of what little enjoyment he was getting from the battle.

"Where is your friend?" he asked as the two boys reached him, each tensing as they prepared for battle.

The two boys glanced at each other in mild confusion, but didn't reply. Apparently the blond hadn't let them know that he was in the area as well. Haku couldn't help but wonder what reason he could have for not joining forces with his fellow Leaf-nin. Perhaps he really wasn't from Konoha, or maybe he wasn't supposed to be here… it didn't really matter. He wasn't around at the moment and that made Haku's job fractionally easier, though no less unpleasant.

Haku bowed his head fractionally and a small, sad smile appeared behind his white mask. "I do not wish to kill you, but – since you are unlikely to get out of our way – I'll take solace in the fact that one less person has to witness your deaths."

If the two were further confused by his words, they didn't have a chance to show it as Haku was between them in an instant. His hand slipped across his kimono, coming away with a senbon. One foot shot out, catching Kiba in the chest and sending him tumbling away with an "ouff" sound as all the air in his lungs was unexpectedly pushed out. At the same time, he brought his senbon up and prepared to drive it into Shino at the indenture just above the clavicle where one of the muscles that helped turn the neck was located. With the incredible pain that the strike was sure to produce as well as the debilitating damage it would do to the muscle tissue, that one attack would nearly have put Shino out of the fight, certainly it would be enough to limit his movement enough to make him an easy target for Haku's second and third attacks which would finish him off.

Before Haku's senbon reached its intended target, however, Shino's left arm came up to block the attack. The Leaf ninja was a half second slower than he needed to be, though nearly a full second _faster_ than Haku had expected him to be, so instead of fully blocking Haku's strike, all he ended up doing was pushing the senbon away from his neck and into his right shoulder.

Rather than the nearly silent sound of the razor sharp needle sliding through muscle tissue, there was a crack as the senbon hit something hard and almost unmoving.

_'Cartilage,' _Haku thought as he pivoted on his right foot until his back was almost completely turned towards Shino and then brought up his left leg and kicked the ninja hard in the stomach sending the larger boy crashing into the railing of the bridge, _'perhaps a bit of bone as well. His arm will be almost useless until he receives medical attention.'_

He glanced over his shoulder at Shino for a second and frowned. It would have been easier on both of them if Shino had just let him get that first attack in.

"Bastard!" Kiba yelled, drawing Haku's attention to him as he leaped forward, one fist already drawn back and ready to strike.

Haku sidestepped the punch easily and then spun away from an open handed swipe by the boys opposite hand. None of the genin had done much fighting during their first encounter with Zabuza, so it was hard to anticipate their skill level beyond the fact that they were all novices. Kiba seemed to favor a sort of animal-like taijutsu style that relied more on instinct and brute force than on precision or finesse. In the hands of someone fast enough and strong enough, it could be a devastating style of attack, difficult to predict with the potential of causing heavy amounts of damage.

Fortunately for Haku, Kiba was nowhere near fast enough or strong enough to be that dangerous yet.

He slapped aside another wild kick, ducked under the follow up punch, and then spun behind the seemingly out of control ninja, drawing a senbon as he did. Before he could insert the senbon between Kiba's shoulder blades, he was forced to roll to the side as Shino's fist passed through the space where Haku's head had been only a second before. Shino's right arm hung uselessly at his side, but the pain and discomfort that he must have been feeling didn't seem to faze him.

Haku leapt back a pace slipping partially into the mist that still hadn't completely dissipated from the bridge – perhaps because at least part of it was natural – and watched the two Leaf-nin. He'd thought (or at least hoped) that Shino would stay down longer, giving him enough time to finish off Kiba and keep them from double teaming him. When there were two of them, it was much harder to be accurate and the fight could be drawn out longer than he wanted it to be.

"He's still directly in front of you, but a meter to the left of where he entered," Hinata called out.

Haku wished that she wouldn't do things like that. It wasn't that her warnings were going to have much effect on the fight – though her ability to see through the mist would make it a little more difficult – but because if her help ended up prolonging things more than was acceptable, he knew he would have to deal with her less kindly than he'd originally planned. She was a nice girl, he didn't want to have to hurt her more than was necessary.

"Hiding in the mist won't help you anymore," Shino informed him calmly as he brought his one good arm up. "Hinata can see through your jutsu and when you injured my arm, I had enough time to place a female kikai bug on you. No matter where you go now, I will be able to find you." A swarm of black bugs erupted from the jacket sleeve of his raised arm and headed straight for Haku.

Haku had seen and heard what had happened to Zabuza during the first battle. If enough of these bugs reached him, it wouldn't be a question of defeating the Leaf ninja quickly, but of finding a way to survive the battle.

A tool that had been blunted was worthless and should just be thrown away. He couldn't be thrown away, not again.

His hands moved almost of their own accord, forming seals before his brain fully caught up with them. As the swarm descended upon him, he bent his knees, his left hand dropping down so that it brushed against the wet stone at his feet, and then coming it up in an arc over his head as he straightened up again. Ice trailed mere centimeters behind his fingertips.

The bugs were almost upon him when they were caught in the ice as it spread back through their ranks running along the moisture of the mist like fire devouring dry leaves.

One eyebrow rose above Shino's dark glasses, the only sign of the surprise Haku hoped he was feeling. People who were shocked tended to hesitate, if only for a second, and that second was what he needed.

He reached out and caught the large chunk of ice with the dark core, hoping that he'd managed to catch all of the insects within it. It was heavy enough that he had to strain to keep it off the ground, which made it all the more effective when it slammed into Shino a second later sending him crashing into a stack of wooden boxes which shattered under the force of his landing.

Hinata immediately ran to him from her spot near the boxes Tazuna was hiding behind. Kiba took also stepped towards his teammate to help him, but in the process momentarily took his eyes off of his enemy. A rookie mistake.

He froze the second he felt the needle tip press against his jugular.

"I'm afraid, Kiba-kun, that you should have concentrated more on running from me than on helping your friend. You aren't ready to face someone like me, yet."

Just as Haku was preparing to drive the senbon into Kiba's neck, pain shot through his leg as Akamaru's sharp fangs clamped down on his calf just below the hem of his hakama. The moment's hesitation was all Kiba needed to twist away and deliver a punishing blow to Haku's head, cracking his hunter nin mask and making his ears ring.

Haku stumbled back, shaking his head to clear it, and then kicked his leg out, sending Akamaru flying away from him, a thin stream of blood trailing from his mouth. He flexed his leg once, to check the extent of his injury and found it to be only a superficial wound.

"Don't underestimate me and Akamaru," Kiba growled as the little white dog bared his fangs and growled next to him, "or we'll kill you before this even starts to get fun."

Haku eyed him silently from behind his mask and then bowed his head. "Forgive me for the insult," he replied calmly as his hand flexed around his senbon, "I will face you more seriously from now on."

Kiba's smirked confidently. "It won't matter." His hand dipped into his pocket and pulled out a round pill which he dropped into Akamaru's open mouth. The effect was instantaneous. Akamaru's fur seemed to stand on end as it went from white to a more reddish color. The puppy's growl which had been almost comical before suddenly grew deeper, far more threatening and far less funny.

Kiba bent down and Akamaru easily leapt onto his back. "This time we'll do it perfectly, Akamaru, just like we practiced" Kiba promised.

Akamaru barked out something that Haku thought almost sounded like the name of a jutsu while Kiba yelled, "Beast Effect no Jutsu!" and then Kiba's voice and another bark, that seemed to syllabically follow Kiba's words, called out, "Beast Human Bunshin!"

There was a large explosion of smoke, which dissipated almost as quickly as it had appeared and suddenly Haku found himself staring at not one, but two Kibas, each with more animalistic features: enlarged canines, fingernails that had lengthened into claws, and eyes that seemed to have lost much of their humanity. Each of the Kibas growled and then attacked in a pincer movement with more speed and strength than Kiba had been capable of before. Haku took a swipe across the chest, cutting open his gray-blue kimono and drawing blood.

Until that moment, he hadn't been sure how dangerous Kiba and Akamaru would be with their unexpected technique, but now he could see that the fight truly wouldn't be as easy as he'd hoped. They still weren't as fast as he was, but there were two of them now and numbers could counter speed so long as they worked in harmony with each other.

He really was going to have to start getting serious.

ooo

Hinata knew she had disobeyed orders by leaving Tazuna to help Shino, but she couldn't just stand there watching as her team was slaughtered by two terrifying opponents. She'd given the old bridge builder a small apologetic glance when Shino went down and received a nod in return. Tazuna understood, or at least thought he did, he ducked lower behind the crates, sitting all the way down and turning his back away from the fight to try to make himself as small and inconspicuous as possible.

Hinata wasn't just leaving him because she felt the need to help her teammates, she simply knew that she was doing no one any good by staying where she was. She couldn't stand against someone like Zazuba or the boy called Haku, not even for a second. She was no more protection for Tazuna than the crates he was cowering behind.

But maybe, if she could help her teammates against Haku, maybe her small contribution to their efforts would be enough to help them – some of them anyway – live through this. If nothing else, _they_ would probably offer more of a challenge to Zabuza than she would.

As she helped Shino into a sitting position, she could instantly see that the damage was not great. A dark bruise was forming on his face and his sunglasses were broken, but other than that, he would be fine once he managed to shake free of the daze that held him after taking such a powerful blow and crashing through a stack of crates.

"Hold still, Shino-kun," Hinata whispered as her eyes simultaneously examined him, watched Kiba and Akamaru attacking Haku, tried to keep watch over Kurenai and Zabuza's fight, and showed her where several workers were hiding – including one who seemed so small he couldn't be much older than her.

Her efforts to heal Kurenai after their first fight with Zabuza hadn't been great, but they'd given her some practice with healing jutsu and she tried to put what she'd learned to good use as she began soothing away his pain as quickly as possible.

ooo

Kurenai flipped backwards away from the enormous sword that Zabuza was swinging around like a toy. She almost didn't make the full turn and had to put a hand down to keep from landing on her face. The second she touched down she dove to the side to dodge the attack she guessed was coming next.

Her dive was awkward and her side screamed in protest, freezing her muscles for a split second. Instead of smoothly rolling up to her feet as she had planned, she rolled along the ground until she hit something cold, hard, and distinctly metallic.

"Come on," Zabuza snorted as he glared down at her while leaning on the sword that her back had come to a rest against, "you aren't even making this worth my time. I thought maybe you'd put up a bit of a fight so I could feel like our last fight didn't end the way it did just because I was being careless. You must have some talent, right?"

Kurenai tried to roll away and scrambled to her feet, only managing to make it half way before her shaking muscles quit on her once more. Zabuza could kill her at any time, she knew it, he knew it and probably anyone who was watching knew it. The only reason he hadn't was because of her previous "victory." He wanted to prove just how far above her he was.

Maybe if she asked nicely, he'd wait until she'd totally healed before demanding the rematch…. Were her situation not so dire, she might have smiled at the absurdity of the thought.

"You aren't going to use your injury as an excuse, are you?" he asked with a smirk, still just leaning casually against his sword, completely off balance, totally open to attack…

…and completely aware that she had no way of taking advantage of any of it.

"No," she grunted, finally forcing herself to stand and drawing a kunai as she did, "I just didn't get much sleep last night. It's taking me a little while to wake up."

"Ah, that must be it," he chuckled. "Here, let me help you then!"

His movements were so fast she almost missed them as the tip of the blade came up and then sped towards her. With only centimeters to spare she twisted to the side, feeling her wound reopen even farther than it already was, and dodged the attack that would have taken off the top half of her head.

Or thought she did.

"You're slow," Zabuza sighed, "This isn't even challenging."

It took her nearly three full seconds to even register the pain radiating from her cheek, but even as she brought her hand up to feel the damage, she knew she'd been cut deep. She could feel the blood running down the side of her face.

"You're beginning to bore me," Zabuza informed her lazily as he hefted the enormous weapon on to his shoulders with ease. "If this is all you've got, I'll just finish you now and move onto the old man."

Kurenai braced herself for the attack she knew was coming and tried to come up with a way to fight back. Nothing came to mind. He was faster than her, stronger than her, and not hampered by a devastating injury the way she was. Physical combat was out. He would be prepared for a genjutsu attack and she wasn't even sure she could concentrate enough to create one in the limited time she had. That left her with ninjutsu. Unfortunately most of her powerful jutsu involved fire and he clearly favored water. She was also versed in Water jutsu, but that didn't help her here. She needed to use an Earth jutsu and none of the ones she knew were going to be strong enough to help her.

Zabuza drove his sword into the bridge so that it would remain standing when he released it and then brought his hands together, forming seals. "Suiton: Suiryoudan no Jutsu!"

Kurenai's eyes widened as an immense watery dragon rose up on the other side of the bridge. It opened its great mouth and hissed before rearing back and diving at her. That amount of water would crush her already injured body and she was too weak and too tired to stop it.

Maybe if she wasn't injured she could have escaped. Maybe if a different jounin was in her spot he or she would know how to get away. Maybe if Asuma was with her…

ooo

Naruto was torn as he watched the two fights going on, his body wrapped in Meisaigakure no Jutsu to hide it from everyone but Hinata should she focus her eyes back behind her. He'd known, on some level, that it might come down to this, where things were going so badly that he was certain he was going to have to step in, but for some reason, knowing it didn't stop him from hesitating.

He could enter the battle now, giving away who he was – at least to Hinata and possibly Kiba and Akamaru – even if he continued to use the illusion of the fisherman who apparently looked similar to Inari's dead father, but the rest of his life would practically be thrown away. He'd have no chance of becoming friends with all the people he loved and cared for once it was known that he was strong enough to take on Zabuza and could also use shadow clones to cover his tracks while he slipped out of the village. Any friendship with people his physical age would be factitious, at best, but perhaps there was already no hope for anything but that. He'd already been manipulating Sakura and trying with Sasuke… at least this way they'd be allowed to manipulate him as well, that was probably fair.

No, he didn't care about fair. He wanted a life, a _real_ life, where things worked out better than they had originally. Announcing what he was would be a last resort. He'd do it if it was the only way to save Team Eight, but not until he was _sure_ it was the only way.

That meant he had to help from the shadows, for now, anyway. Somehow he would find a way to keep everyone on the bridge alive… even Zabuza if he could.

Then, Haku and Kiba's fight began to turn more serious while Zabuza grew tired of playing with Kurenai and began his Water Dragon jutsu. At that point, there was no longer time to question or debate or whine about wanting to have a semi-normal life while manipulating everyone around him for their own good. It was time for action and he was the sort who couldn't hide during such times.

As always seemed to happen when he was faced with a difficult situation that he was not completely prepared for, a small, fragmented plan almost instantly began to form in his mind.

_'What I wouldn't have given for another day to prepare for this,'_ he thought as he committed himself to a course that could easily lead to him being discovered. His fingers came together even as he leapt over the boxes and ran towards Kurenai.

o

o

A/N: -sigh- I suppose it was too much to ask for to be able to finish this whole fight in just this one chapter… it took Kishimoto something like 12 chapters to get through the fight and I think mine was a little longer than his or at least seems longer because it was written out. Just the story here is about 16 thousand words long! Thankfully that divides down nicely into two chapters. You'll have to wait until Sunday to see what happens when Naruto enters the fight, though, since I have to finish up most of my Psychology class this weekend. Anyway, how was it… other than not being finished, of course? This is the first really long fight scene that I've done for the Narutoverse – the earlier Team Eight one wasn't really all that big – so I hope it came out right. They aren't as easy to write as easy as Dragonball Z fights are and I don't have a bunch of episodes of the anime to watch so I can get a feel for how they should go. Well, I'll leave it up to you to decide if it was any good or not, but try to keep in mind that Naruto's time is coming next chapter before you complain about him not doing much. Sunday will have the next update… but maybe if I hit thirty reviews in one day I'll update Saturday night…though you'll all have to live with being my downfall in Psychology if that happens (not really, my grade in the class is secure unless I completely bomb these last two tests)!

Meisaigakure no Jutsu – Hiding Camouflage. Used to make yourself somewhat invisible (camouflaged) though you can still be smelled and the Byakugan can see through it (as with all other jutsu). I think this was used in the Kakashi Gaiden by the Rock-nin that kidnapped Rin.

Suiton: Suiryoudan no Jutsu – Water Release: Water Dragon Blast. Zabuza (and Kakashi) uses this in the first fight between him and Kakashi.


	12. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

o

After the powerful blow Haku had landed on Shino with the chunk of ice, it took the bug user a few minutes to come to his senses and, with the help of Hinata, get back on his feet. As the two genin prepared to enter the fight, reinforcing the already troublesome transformed duo of Kiba and Akamaru, Haku made up his mind. He'd let the fight drag on long enough, adding a third – and potentially even _fourth_ – opponentwould only bring in the possibility that he might actually be defeated. It was unfortunate that Kiba and his dog's attacks as well as Hinata's healing of Shino had forced the fight to become this serious, but it couldn't be helped.

He ducked under one Kiba's outstretched arm, reached up and caught him by the elbow, and swung him back towards Shino, leaving the two boys – or boy and dog – in a heap as he drew a senbon and spun back towards the remaining Kiba. The needle pierced the boy's hand so smoothly that it might as well have just been stabbing through thin air. Kiba cried out in pain, but had enough presence of mind to try to kick at his enemy. To Haku, Kiba's leg was practically in slow motion and his own leg shot out and kicked it away.

"Our battle ends here," he whispered as his free hand rose in front of his chest. His double jointed fingers twisted unnaturally as he formed the seals.

"O-one handed?" Kiba gasped as Haku's foot tapped the damp concrete of the bridge.

"Good-bye."

All around them, water that had covered the ground – both from the moisture of the sea air that had condensed during the previous night and from Zabuza's destroyed water clones – jumped into the air and solidified into needles of ice. Kiba's eyes grew round and for the first time Haku could see true fear in them as the Leaf-nin saw that death was about to claim him. The icicles hesitated for the briefest of seconds and then Haku leapt back as they all raced towards their target.

There was an explosion of ice shards and water as somewhere in the middle Kiba's body was turned into a pincushion.

The water fell away, but where the boy should have been, there was only a small cloud of smoke, not even an object had been left as for the substitution.

_'Kawarimi? With a clone?' _ Haku's mind was racing as he searched for Kiba. _'Not just an illusion, but a corporeal clone…'_

At last he located the boy who had escaped what should have been a killing blow. He was sitting on the ground next to the spot were Akamaru and Shino were finally untangling themselves… his hand bleeding and his eyes even wider than before.

_'It wasn't him,'_ Haku realized with a start, _'he doesn't know what happened either.'_

Kiba looked around wildly and then patted his uninjured hand against his chest and stomach, checking for the holes that should have been there.

"It seems you have a guardian angel," Haku answered the unasked question. He was certain this was the work of the blond ninja he'd met the previous day, the use of shadow clones then and now was too much of a coincidence.

Kiba, having reassured himself of his own survival, pulled the senbon from his hand and flexed it experimentally. It only closed about halfway before whatever ligament and muscle damage had occurred brought the movement to a painful halt. Kiba let out a grunt as his hand relaxed and then looked up at Haku.

He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, the water dragon behind him exploded as it slammed into Kurenai.

The three genin turned in shock, Hinata and Kiba calling out Kurenai's name and looking like they might actually want to leave this fight and go help her. Haku, however, realized that the use of such a large jutsu meant that Zabuza was bored of the fight and just wanted to end things. This meant that Haku himself had only a minute or two – assuming Kurenai lasted that long – before he needed to be finished with his fight as well.

"To think that it actually came to this," he grumbled feeling a little put out that he'd been forced to take things this far. Against two genin and a dog he should have been able to end the fight in two minutes or less. Had Zabuza not been toying with his opponent, Haku's shame would have been completely unbearable. Now that playtime was over, Haku could feel his pulse quickening and his hands trembling.

What sort of tool fails to obey its master's commands? After everything Zabuza had done for him, how could Haku let him be disappointed? How could he call himself a ninja if he couldn't bring himself to kill his master's enemies? And, at the same time, how could he do something that in his heart he wanted no part of?

His hands came together in front of his chest, his middle fingers pressed together as his index fingers slipping underneath them in an awkward pose. Steam rose off his body as the temperature around them began to drop. He would not be useless. He would not lose his reason for existing. He couldn't go back to the way things had been, never again.

"I will kill my heart, if that is what it takes," he whispered.

"What is this?" Shino asked in what seemed to be a calm voice as he shifted his head ever so slightly back and forth allowing him to observe the sudden changes to the area without ever appearing to take his eyes off of Haku.

"Demonic Ice Mirrors," Haku told him as more than a dozen thick sheets of ice sprang up around and over the three genin and the still-transformed dog, trapping them inside. "Now, I'll show you the speed of a real ninja."

He'd barely finished speaking when suddenly the air within the dome was filled with flying senbon that began the very fast process of cutting the four prisoners to ribbons.

ooo

Just as the great stream of water slammed into Kurenai, something hit her in the chest and knocked her back against the railing with such force that all the air in her lungs was expelled as a new wave of agony shot through her body. She couldn't really tell if she'd been hit by some sort of pole, or an unexpected addition to Zabuza's attack, or even a human hand – as unlikely as it seemed – but whatever it was, it wasn't water, at least not totally. The water that _had_ hit her, along with the non-water blow, was enough to send her flipped backwards over the rail and tumbling into the dark ocean below.

Had someone tried to save her, she wondered as her body slipped beneath the waves and began to sink into the inky depths that she'd always feared. If so, then whatever it was had saved her from being crushed _on_ the bridge, but had only changed the location of her death, not the death itself. She was just so tired, too weak to swim or pull herself up onto the surface. She would die just as she would have if the full force of Zabuza's attack had hit her.

Would Hinata, Kiba, and Shino would be okay? Probably not, but there was always the chance that they'd be spared when it was clear that they weren't a threat to their enemies – though being spared might not be a better fate if they were only going to be taken captive, especially for Hinata. Kurenai didn't even want to think what might become of the young kunoichi with the valuable bloodline limit. Being a female captive meant that she would face the very real possibility of being raped, being a Hyuuga meant that she would face the possibility of having her eyes removed _and_ of being raped.

Kurenai pushed the thought aside and tried to force her way back to the surface. It was a wasted effort. Deflated lungs, blood seeping out her reopened side, exhaustion from not having recovered physically from her previous fight… what a sorry sight she must be, she thought as her eyes closed and she felt herself sink down towards her watery grave.

And then, up above her, there was a strange sound. She tried to look up to see what it was, but her eyes were heavy and her body weak. She could make out a shadow standing on the surface of the water or at least floating above her. Zabuza, maybe? Or perhaps a shark looking for an easy meal?

A hand entered the water and grabbed hold of her by her hair, painfully pulling her back towards the surface until she'd risen enough for a second hand to get a good grip on her clothing. Another grabbed her by one arm, and another by the other arm, lifting her until she was completely out of the water.

She looked at her saviors, there were three of them, and tried to make sense of what she was seeing. A fisherman, standing on the water, was holding her up… and yet, even as she looked at him and felt his hands on hers, she knew he was no fisherman. For one thing, there were three of him, all exactly the same, for another, the hands that held hers weren't those of the large men standing over her with the identical worried faces, they were…

"Sorry, Kurenai-sensei," the one of the men said in a soft voice, "but I can't have you thinking what you're thinking now. Try not to remember this as anything more than a crazy dream when you wake up, okay?"

Something hard hit the back of her head just as she realized that the person standing above her was probably a young boy, thirteen or fourteen at best. She slumped into the man's arms and knew no more.

ooo

Naruto hadn't meant to knock Kurenai off the bridge, clearly she was even weaker than she'd seemed as he'd watched her fighting. Had he known she was in that much trouble, he would have stepped in earlier; it was a miracle she was still alive. He waited until he got conformation from the shadow clones he'd sent over the bridge after her that Kurenai had survived and was being carried towards town, before peaking at Zabuza from behind the wall of hardened mud that had blocked the worst of the water dragon's attack. The missing-nin obviously had guessed that something had gone wrong, but was arrogant – or cautious – enough not to come to investigate right away.

The disguised faux-genin turned his eyes towards the large dome of ice in which Kiba, Shino, Hinata, and Akamaru were now trapped. As strange as it sounded, they would be safe in there. Haku hadn't killed Sasuke or Naruto back when he'd had the chance the first time around, so he wouldn't this time either. Minor changes in events aside, Haku was still Haku. He wouldn't do anything worse than leaving them feeling like enormous pincushions and those injuries would heal in a few days. Sasuke had been able to move – albeit gingerly – after only a couple of minutes. Team Eight might not be strong enough to recover so quickly, but they would be fine.

"Are you the one Haku was talking about?" Zabuza asked, bringing Naruto back to his current problem. "The one that said Gato would betray us?"

"No, just a fisherman, obviously," Naruto replied with a grin.

"Doryuuheki is an interesting trick for a fisherman," Zabuza observed as Naruto stepped around the wall and faced him. "Are you from Iwagakure?" He turned his head to the left and looked at Haku's ice mirrors and the genin being attacked inside. "Pretty strange for a Rock-nin to be working with shinobi from Konoha."

Naruto brought his fingers together. "Henge!" Now, instead of the fisherman, he had taken the form of Kurenai. Hinata would still be able to see through it, but she had other things to worry about and it would be enough to fool Kiba and Shino from this distance.

Zabuza raised a hairless brow and his mask shifted as he frowned. "It's too bad you're about to die for sticking your nose where it doesn't belong, I'm sure there's an interesting story behind all these disguises."

"I don't want to fight you," Naruto told him honestly with Kurenai's voice. "If you abandon this pointless job of yours and join the Leaf or at least walk away, no one has to die, but if you don't promise to leave Tazuna-san alone, I'll have no choice but to kill you. Please. Walk away."

"Yup," Zabuza said with a nod of his head, "definitely an interesting story, but hearing stories and joining villages full of weaklings doesn't give me what I want. I am going to kill the old man, and then I'm going to kill Gato whether he pays me or not. _That_ at least will get me a step closer to my dream."

He charged with a suddenness that Naruto wasn't completely prepared for and only the long learned survival instincts of battle saved him from losing his head. He ducked as the enormous sword passed overhead, and then rolled forward when Zabuza's zanbato changed directions and fell towards him.

Naruto's hand slipped into his kunai holster mid-roll and by the time he'd finished his hand held a weapon that he stabbed forward towards Zabuza's unprotected stomach. It would have been nice if it could really have been that easy, but sadly Zabuza wasn't called the Devil of the Hidden Mist for nothing. He let go of the handle of his sword with one hand, amazingly still keeping the blade off the ground with the strength of the other alone, and caught Naruto by the arm.

He brought his leg up to kick the kneeling Naruto in the face, but Naruto's free hand pushed down on the leg and used it's momentum to flip his body into the air. He landed in a crouch and rolled away as the zanbato passed so close that it nearly passed through the image of Kurenai's hair. As he rolled, he threw three kunai at Zabuza – they were easily blocked, but they caused the missing-nin to break off his attack and gave Naruto a little breathing room. Not a lot, but a little.

Naruto's mind ran through a list of jutsu he could use at this point and he had to shake his head at how short it was. This sort of fight was different from what he'd grown used to as an adult. For one thing, he had to keep the bridge in one piece – Tazuna and the rest of the village wouldn't be able to afford to make too many repairs which meant that some of his more powerful jutsu, many of which tended to explode spectacularly, were off limits. For another, he couldn't summon toads yet so his favorite allies, Gamakichi and Gamatatsu, couldn't come and help him… though when he thought about it, those two were probably pretty worthless at this point being nowhere near big or strong enough to even lift the katana blades they'd so expertly wielded in the future.

_'This time around, I'll have to find some less flashy jutsu that aren't destructive on such a large scale,'_ he thought with a sigh. _'It's so much harder to make up weaker versions of the ones I know…'_

His fingers moved through the necessary seals and a clone appeared on either side of him, already cloaked in the proper illusion. The three Kurenais drew kunai and charged at an amused Zabuza.

"Haku overestimated you," Zabuza commented as he swung his immense sword at the trio. The two clones brought their kunai up and blocked the attack, one of them vanishing in a cloud of smoke, while Naruto dove under the zanbato and through Zabuza's spread legs. As he passed by, his kunai sliced into the side of the missing-nin's leg, cutting him just above the knee. It wasn't deep, but it was enough to get Zabuza's attention.

One more roll and Naruto was on his feet, his fingers already forming seals. "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu!"

Zabuza had already turned to face him, his own fingers rapidly forming seals. "Suiton: Mizu no Yoroi!"

Naruto's fireball slammed into the surge of water that swirled up and around Zabuza, leaving nothing but steam in its wake. The two stared at each other for a moment and then Zabuza's mask shifted as he smiled. "Water beats fire. Didn't they teach you that wherever you're from?"

Naruto brought one hand up in front of his face, his index and middle finger extended. "You're beaten, give up."

Zabuza's eyes widened and then he chuckled incredulously. "Beaten? What fight have you been watching?"

Naruto didn't smile. "Please, I don't want to kill you, but if that's what it takes to keep you from hurting Tazuna or destroying this bridge, I'll do it."

The water surrounding Zabuza's body splashed to the ground as he released his jutsu. "Don't bring this shit up with me again. I have a job to do and an aspiration to fulfill, that old man _will_ die."

Naruto shook his head. "Then I don't have any choice, because no matter what, I can't let you do that."

Zabuza heard footsteps behind him and turned just in time to see the remaining clone jump forward and onto his back. "Shadow clones aren't very scary," he commented as he began to reach back to pull the image or Kurenai off of him.

"This isn't Kage Bunshin no Jutsu," Naruto replied, "It's Bunshin _Puchi_ Bakuha no Jutsu!" He closed his eyes as the clone exploded.

ooo

Hinata stared up at the towering array of ice mirrors in awe. She'd never heard of such a technique, let alone seen anything like it. Within each mirror stood the image of the masked ninja, each identical to all the others, holding a senbon in his hand as he prepared to strike.

Kiba whipped his head back and forth, trying to watch every single reflection at once. Shino was less wasteful in his movements, but also seemed to be trying to find some detail that would reveal the real enemy. Akamaru was already down, his little body pierced by a dozen or more needles. The illusion that surrounded him hadn't lasted past the first few seconds after they were trapped. He turned his head slightly and offered a weak whimper to Kiba to let them know that he was still alive.

Hinata brought her hands together, pushing chakra towards her eyes. "Byakugan."

The world around her became more translucent as her advanced bloodline kicked in. She could see Kiba, Shino, and Akamaru perfectly even though she had her back to them and – most importantly – she could see which of the mirrors contained the real masked ninja. Beyond the ice mirrors, she could even see Tazuna still hiding behind the crates and Zabuza fighting… Hinata's focus shifted away from her immediate problem and turned to the other ninja on the bridge. Zabuza wasn't fighting Kurenai the way he should have been, though around the person he was fighting she could see an illusion that had Kurenai's shape, instead he was fighting…

No, it couldn't be, her eyes were playing tricks on her. He was in Konoha, how could he…

"Above!" she called out as Haku's hand flashed forward, calling her away from what couldn't be and back to what _was_.

Kiba, with his superior speed and reflexes leapt to the side, but Shino was slower and was probably still feeling the effects of the blow he'd taken early in the fight, he took a senbon in his side as he attempted to spin away. Hinata rolled to the left and almost had time to feel the rush of excitement that accompanied the knowledge that she could actually help her teammates in this fight, that her abilities would at least level the playing field for them, but before she'd fully gotten to feel that emotion or even completed her roll, Kiba cried out in pain and stumbled, the back of his knee and his hamstring each pierced by a senbon.

Hinata blinked in surprise. The ninja that she had warned them about was gone from the spot she'd last seen him and was now in the mirror slightly to the left of Kiba. It was impossible. She hadn't even seen him move, hadn't even seen him prepare to move. He'd traveled over ten meters and he'd done it faster than her eyes could follow.

"Lef—" she started to call out, but stopped as he was suddenly not there again. A senbon caught her in the back of the leg and another pierced her back about half way up.

"Behi—" again, he was gone, needles already raining down on Kiba and Shino as they tried to follow her too-slow warnings.

She opened her mouth to call out another warning, but once more their enemy was already elsewhere, she barely managed to get her arms up in time to keep the senbon coming at her from above and to her right before they pierced her neck.

Hinata swallowed hard, biting back the pain of injury and fear as tears stung her eyes. She was useless, again. Her teammates were dying and she couldn't help them because she was too weak, too slow, too useless to do anything but die with them.

"Right," she whispered, as three more senbon hit her teammates from the direction she hadn't had time to give them.

A senbon caught her in the shoulder with enough force to spin her around. As she reached up to grab it, Kiba's eyes met hers and he smiled despite the blood running down his arms, legs, and from the many scratches that covered his face. "Not your fault," he said, just loud enough to be heard and then he fell to his knees.

With her Byakugan active she could see the way his chakra was erratically flowing through his body. He was dying. All of them were. The senbon were picking them apart a piece at a time, first focusing on spots that slowed their reactions and then slowly beginning to zero in on more vital areas of their bodies.

The masked ninja appeared in the mirror almost directly in front of Kiba, his arm already moving to deliver the final blow.

"No!" Hinata cried out as three senbon shot towards the completely defenseless genin.

Her pleas, of course, did nothing to alter their flight. One struck Kiba in the ribs, another in almost the middle of his chest, and the third…

Hinata's heart stopped and she felt the remains of her breakfast flip over in her stomach as a small, white object leaped in front of the final senbon that would have hit Kiba in the neck. A loud yelp echoed across the bridge, before falling silent as Akamaru hit the ground like a limp rag doll and didn't move. The senbon aimed at his friend protruding from his eye.

From somewhere, very far away, perhaps, or maybe even from her own mouth, Hinata thought she heard an enraged cry of alarm. The shock of Akamaru lying there was too great for her to even try to figure out where the cry had come from.

"A… Akamaru…" Kiba whispered as his eyes located the puppy's body. He reached a shaking hand towards the limp form, and then collapsed on the ground, his fingertips resting against Akamaru's paw.

For a moment, the battle ground was completely silent, and then Shino was charging at the nearest image. He managed three steps before two senbon sliced through his calf, he took another stumbling step and then went down as two more senbon descended on him from above, piercing the back of his neck.

Hinata couldn't think, she couldn't speak, she couldn't even move as the masked ninja appeared in the mirror in front of her.

"I'm sorry, Hinata-chan," the ninja said softly, his arm rising, two senbon between his fingers. "This was not my wish."

She recognized the voice instantly but then something seemed to prick her neck and it no longer mattered that she had spent a whole morning talking and picking herbs with the boy who had killed her teammates. The world around her became hazy and she dimly realized that at some point her Byakugan had released. She tried to swallow, but her throat was stuck. She reached up and just managed to get a finger on one of the senbon sticking out of her neck before her legs gave out and she fell to her knees.

The clan elders would be furious when they found out that a Main House member had been killed. Without the curse seal that was placed on the Branch family members, the secrets of her Byakugan could be uncovered and stolen. Even in death, somehow, she'd found a way to disappoint everyone.

ooo

As the smoke from the exploding clone began to clear, a Kurenai-disguised Naruto surveyed his handiwork. The explosion had still been more than he'd wanted, the area where it had gone off would need a lot of work before it would be restored to what it was supposed to be, but it didn't look like there was any damage that would compromise the structural integrity of the bridge.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He hadn't wanted the fight to go this way, but had known from the beginning that there was little chance of anything else happening. Zabuza was too hardened to be reasoned with, too settled with the idea that a ninja could just kill all emotion and be a tool, that right and wrong were only a matter or opinion. Still, he wished there could have been some sort of right way for everything to work out. A way for everyone to walk away so no one had to die needlessly.

_'Live and let live, huh? I'm getting soft in my old age,'_ he mused.

When a gentle breeze collected the last of the smoke and pulled it out to sea, Naruto instantly knew something was wrong. The explosion had been powerful, but it had not been enough to incinerate Zabuza. There should be a body, a sword, something besides an empty indention in the cracked stone of the bridge were the attack had gone off. His fingers slipped into his kunai holster as he started to turn his head.

Zabuza was a master of silent killing. He could sneak up on someone in the middle of a group of people, take his head, and vanish without ever having been noticed – except by the one who was now a corpse. His mist jutsu helped him in that area, of course, but a turned head was just as blind as one surrounded by mist.

This time wasn't like the others though. He was injured now, far slower and louder than he would normally have been. It was a testament to his skill that he got as close as he did before Naruto heard him, but Naruto wasn't going to congratulate him on his resiliency. The sound of a footstep followed by the whistle of the sword passing through the air was all his body needed to react.

The blond ducked under the zanbato as it came across at neck level. The sword was heavy and Zabuza's current strength was barely enough to lift and swing it, he couldn't change directions with it after it missed. Naruto pivoted on his left foot, spinning and driving the kunai in his right hand up at Zabuza's neck. Amazingly the missing-nin managed to partly leap away from the kunai, just enough to escape the kiss of its razor sharp blade.

But Naruto had been moving on instinct and his instincts didn't take chances by just swinging knives.

Zabuza's eyes widened in alarm as his brain registered what had happened. A dark crimson stain began to spread across the bandages that covered his neck and mouth. Wind chakra had extended just far enough off the kunai's blade that dodging by a centimeter or two wasn't enough. An edge far sharper than even that of the kunai had cut across his throat. He opened his mouth to say something, but all that came up was blood as the white bandages quickly soaked through and began to drip their contents down onto his dark sleeveless shirt. Naruto guessed that this was a sign that his trachea had been cut as well as a major blood vessel. There would be no recovering from such a wound, not without someone like Tsunade or Sakura around.

Naruto watched as Zabuza sunk to his knees. His eyes met Naruto's for the briefest of moments, so brief that Naruto wasn't completely sure he hadn't imagined it, there was understanding in them… as if he understood that Naruto really had tried to save his life. Then he collapsed forward and lay still.

For a moment, the bridge was silent, and then an anguished cry erupted from somewhere behind Naruto. Naruto spun towards the spot where Team Eight had been fighting Haku. As he'd expected, they were all down, but he knew that Haku wouldn't have killed any of them. The ice mirrors that had once surrounded them had collapsed, leaving Team Eight lying in a large puddle of water. Between the defeated Team Eight and Naruto stood a trembling Haku, his mask in his hands and his dark eyes locked on the body of Zabuza. Tears ran down the boy's cheeks as he continued to stare at the body until finally he dragged his eyes up to meet Naruto's.

The two stared at each other for a long moment and then Haku's hand brushed along the edge of his kimono and fired a senbon at Naruto. The blond was prepared for the attack though and he threw the kunai still clenched in his fist, intercepting the needle before it reached him.

Haku nodded. "You aren't injured, so clearly you aren't Kurenai-san," he whispered. "You are the boy I met in the woods," he reached up and brushed away his tears, though they were instantly replaced by more, "and you've killed my precious person, my reason to exist… just as you said you would."

"I didn't want to," Naruto said quietly. "I was trying to save both of …"

"Please, don't speak. The time for talking is done," Haku said with a shake of his head. "I am a tool that failed its master, what good am I? The man I loved is dead and my reason for living… is gone."

Naruto had known Haku would be despondent after Zabuza's death, but he underestimated the level that it would go to. He'd thought that there might be a chance to convince him that he didn't have to pour his soul into just one precious person, that there were others out there who could give him a purpose in life, or at the very least that he would have to fight Haku and could end the fight without killing. After so many years, he'd partially forgotten just how utterly devoted and dependent upon Zabuza Haku was.

The dark haired boy reached into his kimono, pulled out a senbon, and – after one last sad look down at Zabuza – pushed it into his temple. Naruto couldn't even imagine the will power such an act must have taken, because Haku didn't push it in hard and fast so that he was dead before his bodies natural reactions could stop him from hurting himself. He deliberately pushed the needle into his brain, overpowering survival instincts, and then collapsed.

The moment Naruto had fully realized what the other boy was doing he'd dashed forward to try to stop him, but his shock had left him too slow to save the missing-nin. Haku was probably dead before Naruto even reached him.

The image of Kurenai vanished as Naruto lowered Haku's body to the ground. "Damn it!" he groaned as he looked down at the boy he'd thought he might be able to save from the clutches of his fated early death. Haku's face was strangely serene despite how painful his death must have been. Naruto couldn't remember all that he'd learned of Haku's past, but he knew it hadn't been a happy one until he'd met Zabuza. Maybe in the next life, he'd find some true peace.

After gently moving Haku so that he was laying next to Zabuza, Naruto a headed for Team Eight. Shino was the first he reached, the dark haired boy's sunglasses were gone and blood was oozing from a dozens of wounds and mixing with the water pooled around him, but he didn't look so different from how Sasuke had looked after he'd fought Haku. Naruto kneeled next to him and listened for a heart beat.

And listened…

And listened…

Just when the cold touch of fear began to reach for his stomach, he heard it. Faint, but there. Naruto let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He'd known Haku wouldn't kill them, but for a second there he'd…

His eyes fell upon Akamaru.

Naruto felt the blood drain from his face. The puppy's white fur was spotted red around the areas where senbon were sticking out of him, but that was no different from the rest of Haku's victims. What _was_ different was the senbon that had pierced his eye. Naruto stared at Akamaru, trying to will the puppy's chest to rise and fall as he took a breath or to give some sign that he was still alive – though with an injury like that, Naruto couldn't see how he could be.

It didn't make any sense! Haku shouldn't have done that, he _wouldn't_ have! He might have it in him to kill if he felt it was completely necessary, but even against three genin he couldn't possibly have needed to do something like this…

He practically ran to the other two, suddenly fearful of what he might find, but both Hinata and Kiba were in the same shape as Shino. They'd wake up eventually, though how soon was a mystery to someone with his minimal medical knowledge, but Akamaru… Naruto knew even less about veterinary medicine than he did about human medicine, but he just couldn't imagine such a small animal surviving something so ghastly.

This was what he'd come back to stop, but it was still happening again. Akamaru might not be human, but that didn't make him any less of a friend and Kiba would be crushed by this loss. He'd vowed that he'd keep all of his precious people safe, that he'd protect everyone from the dangers around them, but then he'd assumed that since he knew the future he could predict how events would play out even when parts of them were different. Now the evidence of what that assumption had led to was lying unmoving on the cold stone of Tazuna's bridge.

If Akamaru had been killed then Hinata and Shino and Kiba could just as easily have… the weight of what his mistake could have cost not only his friends but the village as a whole was staggering. He almost couldn't handle thinking about it and so he was glad for the distraction offered him by the sound of many footsteps coming from the end of the bridge.

ooo

Gato couldn't help but smile as his large ship reached the walkway from the sea up to the bridge. His ships always carried something good. Usually weapons or drugs or some other form of contraband, even human slaves, but today it was an especially good haul. Today the cargo was going to eliminate two or perhaps even three thorns that had been in his side for far longer than was acceptable.

The mercenaries that his ship was carrying were going to kill Zabuza and that brat of his. And if Zabuza had failed to kill the bridge builder, then Gato would have the pleasure of watching him die as well. Maybe, just this once, he'd even get his own hands dirty and strike the killing blow himself; that might be fun.

The best part was that even all the mercenaries combined weren't going to cost him as much as Zabuza would have.

He'd get a show and save some money at the same time, the perfect way to spend an afternoon.

The ship came to a stop and the anchor was dropped. The only sounds he could hear were the crashing of waves against the bridge supports and the creaking of wood as his ship bobbed up and down on the sea. There were no sounds of battle, no clashing of steel on steel, no sounds of people crying out in pain as bones were broken… nothing.

Was it already over?

He hoped not. He wanted to get there right when it was finishing, so that whoever he found that needed to be killed would be at their weakest, having just finished fighting for their lives. If Zabuza had been finished for a while, he might pose more of a problem even to such a large group of fighters.

Then again, he was paying them each the same thing, not dividing the spoils among them. If Zabuza killed half of them before dying, it would save Gato tens of thousands of ryou. A small fortune.

There were bright sides to everything if you knew how to look at it, he supposed.

"Alright, boys, it's time for you to go make some money!"

The men grinned evilly as they headed for the walkway, Gato in the lead, his cane tapping rhythmically as he worked his way up the ramp.

He walked up onto the bridge and looked around in disappointment. Apparently he wasn't going to save any money after all. The bridge was dead silent, several bodies strewn about. A short distance down the bridge, near a pile of boxes, was Zabuza lying face down, next to him was Haku, that bastard who had broken Gato's arm. Gato was especially saddened to see him already dead. He'd had a special revenge planned out for the brat.

Movement off to the side caught his eye and he turned as a blond haired boy in orange looked up at him. He was kneeling next to still another body, this one with several needles sticking out of it.

"Hey kid," Gato called out as he walked towards him, "what happened here?"

The boy's eyes were a piercing blue, but seemed hallow, even from the distance. He rose and looked at the mob, focusing on Gato in particular. "You're Gato," he said calmly. It wasn't a question.

"That's Gato-_sama_ to you, kid," Gato chuckled and the men behind him joined in. "Are you going to tell me what happened or am I going to have to let my friends ask you?"

The boy's eyes narrowed and Gato noticed three strange lines marking each cheek – like whiskers. "This is all _your_ fault," he growled.

Gato rolled his eyes. What was it with young ninja and being stupid? Anyone with half a brain would have noticed the ridiculous number of fighters standing there and simply said whatever they needed to say to get out of the situation alive. The blond could have just said, "They killed each other" and walked away. It was that easy. Instead, he was acting like he wanted to pick a fight even when faced with fifty to one odds.

And a little guy like him didn't look like he'd be able to handle it if the odds were even. Gato sighed, "Kusabi, teach this badly dressed punk some manners. Just remember to leave enough of him alive to answer a few questions when you're done."

Kusabi was not the strongest fighter of the group, but he was deadly with his chigiriki and he'd offer either a decent fight, or at least let the others see what the little brat was capable of.

Kusabi stepped forward and smiled, crinkling the red paint that ran from ear to ear and across his eyes as he gave the ball and chain at the end of the metal staff an expert twirl that often intimidated his opponents. Naruto didn't take a step back, he didn't take a step forward, his eyes didn't even shift off of Gato. He just stood there, staring, his chest rising and falling with each quick breath he sucked in and blew out.

Few of Gato's men were used to being ignored when they were threatening someone, but Kusabi with his outlandish four-bun hairstyle, face paint, and the tassel-like decorations he clipped into his hair was especially unused to it.

"Asshole," he snarled in annoyance, the metal ball swinging faster. He ran forward, swinging the ball down hard at Naruto's head, looking to crush the pest in one shot.

At the last second, the blond leaned back slightly – his eyes still on Gato – and the ball smashed into the ground at his feet having missed him by centimeters. He stepped forward, putting his foot down on the ball to keep it from being pulled up again and his eyes finally turned towards Kusabi.

"I don't remember you," Naruto said almost to himself after a moment of staring. "Zabuza was probably supposed to kill you… unless you were one of the ones who lived… maybe you even did some good with your life…" He ran his hands up over his face and into his hair, grabbing two fistfuls of his blond longs as he looked up at the sky and sighed. "If I'd just remembered how we got Tazuna's mission, I could have saved everyone and none of this would have happened. Now it's all so screwed up… I don't know how I'm supposed to fix it."

"What are you talking about, kid?" Kusabi asked in confusion.

Naruto opened his mouth to reply, but stopped at the sound of approaching footsteps behind them. Glancing over his shoulder he could see a large crowd of people approaching from the village. "Damn it," he growled, "I don't have time for this!" He turned his attention back to Gato and his eyes narrowed dangerously. "At least I still remember what was supposed to happen to you."

In the blink of an eye his right hand had dipped into the pouch strapped to his leg and then flicked forward.

Gato barely had a chance to look surprised before two kunai hit, one in the chest and the other right between the eyes. He landed on his back without making any noise other than the sound of his body hitting the concrete.

His men looked down at him in shock and then turned back towards the boy as he brought his hands together. "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"

Where once there was one boy, now there were four and each of them brought their hands together to form yet another seal. "Henge!" Instead of four blond ninja, there were now two dark haired boys in jackets, a small girl with white eyes, and a tall beautiful woman.

"What the hell is this?" someone in the crowd of mercenaries asked.

Kusabi backed away from his ever changing opponent, and retreated into the safety of the rest of the group. There were only four of them, or him, or whatever, but Gato had made it sound like all they'd have to do is take out one tired – hopefully injured – ninja, maybe two at the most. Whoever this kid was, he didn't seem very tired or injured.

Someone behind him yelled out, "Hey, who's going to pay us now?"

It was as if a switch had been flipped on, as the whole gang of them suddenly realized that this one person, or four people, had killed the man who signed their paychecks.

"Yeah!" yelled another voice.

"You damn ninja, you killed our meal ticket!" called out someone else.

Kusabi grinned, feeling his confidence returning. There were a lot of them after all, and only four of him, them, whatever. "No sweat, boys," he laughed, "there's a whole village at the end of the bridge. We'll just have them pay us what we're owed and then some! Who's up for a little shopping trip?"

A loud cheer went up from the group as their nervousness completely vanished.

"Let's go!"

An arrow whistled through the air and struck the ground right at Kusabi's feet as he took a step to sprint towards the village.

"If you another step forward," a young boy's voice called out, "the next arrow won't miss."

Kusabi looked up, just beyond the four ninja stood a crowd of citizens with at least as many people as Gato's gang, each armed with simple spears, rakes, and crossbows – the only weapons found in a typical fishing village – and each looking prepared to fight to the death if that's what it took. At the head of the group was a little boy, no older than ten, wearing a helmet that looked too big for him, his face stern and his eyes burning.

The crossbow in his arms no longer held an arrow.

Another villager stepped forward and scowled at Gato's men. "If you come any further onto our island, the citizens of this country will stop you with everything we've got!" he yelled, waving his spear threateningly. The crowd behind him roared in agreement.

There was a tense moment where Kusabi and the rest of Gato's gang seemed to weigh their chances. They could probably defeat the villagers, though there would be a lot of casualties if they chose to attack. That only meant, however, that the survivors would be that much richer.

Then the ninja in front of them brought their hands together once more as they said, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" And the four ninja suddenly became a hundred ninja, each of them grinning confidently and licking their lips.

Any remaining confidence among Gato's men vanished in an instant and they all turned as one to flee for the boat. In less than a minute, the bridge was clear.

"Hinata-chan!" Inari called out as he ran forward, grinning from ear to ear.

One of the Hinatas turned to look at him, and smiled sadly. "You did good, kid," she said softly and then she, Kiba, Shino, Kurenai, and all of their duplicates brought their hands together and vanished in a puff of smoke.

When the cloud cleared the villagers all gasped in surprise as the bodies the four ninja who had just stared down Gato's men suddenly came into view.

Inari ran to Hinata's prone form, his eyes tearing up as he lifted her head and gently brushed blood splattered hair out of her face. "H-H-Hinata-chan?" he asked softly, his lip quivering as he struggled to hold in his tears. He couldn't cry, his dad had told him he could only cry when he was happy… but it was so hard.

"Hinata-chan, please… you… you can't be dead!" he cried out as the tears forced their way past his eyes and down his cheeks.

A gentle hand touched his shoulder and he jerked his head up to see the sad face of his grandfather looking down at him. "She was a super girl," the old bridge builder whispered. "She did everything she could to help her friends… but sometimes… sometimes that just…" he closed his eyes and looked away. "Sometimes… no matter how brave and strong a person is… they still get killed. It doesn't mean they weren't doing the right thing… that's just how life goes sometimes."

Inari looked down at Hinata's peaceful face and then over at Shino, Kiba, and Akamaru. "Why didn't dad save them?" he whispered. "The way he saved me?"

Tazuna didn't understand what Inari was talking about and wasn't particularly worried about trying to answer the boy's questions. He knelt down and took his grandson in his arms and hugged him tightly as a fresh wave of grief washed over the boy.

Soon the village would want to celebrate its newfound independence from the tyranny of Gato, but for now that wasn't important to Tazuna. All that mattered was that he hold his grandson while he cried. It was unfair that this child had to experience the harsh reality of the world again after all that he'd already been through. This pain wouldn't be as bad as that of losing his father, but how much could one little boy take?

In his heart, Tazuna cursed that gods that allowed such pain to find one so young, gods that allowed good people who died protecting he and his bridge even after they knew he'd lied to them when he requested their help. If there was any justice in the world, _he_ would be the one who died while Kurenai and her team of very young ninja would have survived.

"I-Ina…ri-kun?" Hinata's voice whispered weakly and in an instant all sacrilegious thoughts were vanished and the celebration was ready to start.

ooo

Two hours later, Naruto was standing by the lake where his team had fought Zabuza in another reality. Behind him lay the graves of Zabuza and Haku, marked by Zabuza's zanbato, Haku's sash wrapped around it, and two simple wooden markers upon which he'd carved their names. He didn't have any food to offer their spirits, other than his final ration bar, he hoped they'd they understand that he wasn't going to give it to them, disgusting though it might be.

He'd tried to save them, but in the end, their fates were the same as they'd been the first time around. The events around their deaths were different, maybe even _worse_, but at the end of the day they were no less dead now than they had been after the other battle on the bridge.

The only thing he'd managed to change was that this time they weren't alone.

He'd had such high hopes for this mission once he'd found that Team Eight had lived through the trip to the Wave Country, but now he was returning to Konoha with a heavy heart.

He gave the graves a polite bow and then turned to head home. Weary as he felt, he had no time to rest.

o

o

A/N: Finally! Finally I'm done with the arc that would not end! Hopefully Naruto's fight with Zabuza, as well as Haku's fate, worked okay. I like Haku, but he _always_ gets saved in time travel stories and frankly I have enough characters to deal with as it, I don't need another… plus, it's important that Naruto not be able to change everyone's fate and that his trust in his future knowledge be shaken. By the way, I was just joking about the thirty reviews meaning that I'd update quicker, but since I actually _got_ thirty reviews I kind of felt like I had to post tonight rather than tomorrow.

I got a couple of complaints, again, about Naruto's planning. So, I'd like to point out that he's doing all this on the fly. Hokage's aren't infallible, they make mistakes. They, for instance, let a Chuunin Exam continue even though they know that there is an evil enemy running around in it… they might have reasons for doing so, but a lot of bad happens as a result of that choice anyway. Naruto becoming – sort of – Hokage was more because of his ability to inspire and will things to happen on the battlefield. He's someone who knows his deficiencies (uh, planning ahead) and finds people to help him overcome those (Shikamaru, Sakura, etc), not someone who is the perfect leader. If things have gone to hell and you need someone to make that split second decision that will save your life or turn things around, he's your man. If you need someone to rally the troops, turn enemies into allies, or act as your tank on the battlefield, he's definitely your man. If you want someone who will write up a well thought through battle plan three days in advance… he'll be the first to tell you to go talk to Shikamaru or Kakashi.

Please review. See you next Friday.

Doton: Doryuuheki no Jutsu – Earth Style Wall. It was used in the Third's fight against Orochimaru. User spits a bunch of mud out and it hardens into a wall. It was the only way I could think of to have the Water Dragon Blast blocked without tearing up the bridge…

Bunshin _Puchi_ Bakuha no Jutsu – Shadow Clone _Small_ Explosion… I hope (since I don't know Japanese). A modification of Itachi's jutsu (though I assume, since Kakashi knew what it was almost instantly, that it isn't an Itachi exclusive) that creates a shadow clone that can explode.

Suiton: Mizu no Yoroi – Water Release: Armor of Water. Made this one up using the wording from Gaara's Armor of Sand. Water flows up and around the user's body, completely covering them. Seems like it would be pretty useless except in repelling fire jutsu, but maybe there could be other uses…

Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu – Fire Release: Great Fireball. A Konoha favorite. Sasuke used it on Kakashi way back in the beginning of the story.

Chigiriki – This is basically a Japanese mace. Staff, chain, weight at the end… sounds like a mace to me.


	13. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

o

Knowing the future, knowing without a doubt what would happen before it happened because – to you – it already _had_ happened, was a dangerous thing. It seemed to be such a powerful tool. Being able to predict an enemy's actions, knowing what he would throw at you and when, was an advantage that couldn't be overcome… except for the fact that no such advantage could possibly exist.

The real problem with knowing _a_ future – not to be confused with knowing _the_ future – was that it left you complacent. You knew what would happen, how someone would act, what the outcome would be, so why would you need to worry about what happened or how someone acted or what the outcome was? Why would you act as if your future knowledge was faulty? If the outcome was what you wanted, why would you change it? Unfortunately, even having seen the future, you are still living in the present. The moment you react to or in any way influence anyone or anything, your future knowledge – which was based on you acting differently, if only fractionally – was in danger of becoming useless. The second something happened that you hadn't already seen, you no longer actually knew the future but instead were reacting to the way you _thought_ things _might_ happen and not the way that they _were_ happening.

And yet, it was so hard not to accept your knowledge of the future as the way things would happen unless you intentionally changed it. It was hard not to think of that knowledge as infallible. It was hard not to trust it to bind people to their fated actions even though you yourself were proving that there was no such thing as "fated actions."

Knowing the future almost seemed to force you to sit back and wait for things to work out. It disconnected you from reality, from time. "These things have already happened," you'll say or "I know what his next move will be," but you can't know what his next move will be because these things _haven't_ already happened, they are happening right now and changing fractionally or massively by the second. History is not set in stone, it's not even set in Jello, it's like water running through your fingertips. You can see where the stream is going, but the second your hand touches the water, you've altered the course of millions of water molecules, and haven't even noticed.

_'When did I become complacent?'_ Naruto asked himself wearily as he silently leaped from a tree to the tall walls that surrounded the village and then dropped safely back inside. _'Have I been like this since I woke up in the past… or did it start in the future? Was it before or after Sakura died? Or Shikamaru? Or maybe it was after Sai… or Kiba and Akamaru…'_ The point wasn't when it had happened, but that it _had_ happened. Whether it happened in the future or not was irrelevant, those things hadn't really happened as far as anyone but him was concerned.

The trip home was long and tiring. Perhaps more so because he didn't have the sort of thing to focus his mind as he'd had before. Akamaru on the bridge, what would happen to Kiba now, Haku unnecessarily dead, his reception at home if he'd been found to be missing… they didn't offer the same focus as "hurry or your friends will be dead" had when he'd started his unofficial mission three – or was it four? – days ago. They gave him the same feeling of dread, but not the same focus. Was it because there were so many different things to think about, or was it just because he didn't actually want to think about any of them?

As he scaled his apartment building's wall, he could hear loud conversations from the patrons of the bars and restaurants near his home as they headed home or perhaps went to find another place to drink after they'd been cut off. A cool spring breeze swept the tantalizing aromas of the many foods being prepared and enjoyed throughout the village. He _was_ hungry, but his exhaustion was enough to make sleep sound better. He'd slept about eight hours in nearly four days. Jiraiya had said that the body needed around seven or eight hours of sleep a night or it would start experiencing sleep debt, requiring you to sleep more to make up the lost time. Somehow, Naruto didn't think that an average of two a night could be called 'close enough.'

Truthfully, even if he was fully rested, he didn't think he'd have been able to stomach a meal at the moment.

He slipped silently in through his window and headed for his bed, stripping out of his jacket and pushing the hitai-ate up and over his head and letting it fall on the floor behind him. As he flung his jacket in the generally area of his broken dresser, he noticed the presence in his room. He didn't even break stride as he weighed his options: stupid unsuspecting genin or complacent-due-to-future-knowledge-that-wasn't-accurate-unless-it-had-nothing-to-do-with-him – but not wholly stupid – pseudo-Hokage?

He sighed and turned towards the presence. He was too tired to play games right now and wasn't completely sure he even wanted to keep playing them anyway. "Who's there?" he asked, knowing that it had to either be Kakashi – if he was potentially in trouble – or a member of ANBU – if he was _definitely_ in trouble.

"Where have you been?" Kakashi asked calmly as he stepped into view and leaned against the far wall, holding _Icha Icha Paradise_ – which he'd apparently been reading while he waited – in his left hand. "Your teammates and I were looking for all day. We were about to go to the Hokage and report your disappearance."

"I was training," Naruto lied. If Kakashi was here, then he was only in moderate trouble… unless Kakashi wasn't alone. Naruto held his breath and listened carefully for any telltale signs as he tried to search for any killer intent in the room. He didn't feel anything, which probably meant that they were alone, though it was impossible to be completely sure.

"Training?" Kakashi asked, his one visible brow raising in mock surprise. "I thought you were sick. Isn't that why you told me you needed the rest of the week off?"

"I started feeling better that night, so I thought I'd get a little practice in on my own," Naruto replied evenly. It hadn't even been two days since Kakashi had stopped by to check up on the clone Naruto had left behind. At most, his teammates had discovered he was missing that afternoon. That wasn't a long time to be out of touch, but the village wouldn't take chances with a jinchuriki. It seemed that it was only the fact that Kakashi hadn't reported him missing that had saved him from a major hassle.

"Why didn't you come and find your team?"

"Because I left the village and ran all the way to another village to fight some missing-nin," Naruto said with a yawn. "It was hard work."

Kakashi didn't look impressed, but then he wasn't supposed to be. It was sort of funny to tell the truth and have it sound like the most absurd sort of lie. Since it was the first thing he'd said, and since Kakashi had had plenty of time to observe Naruto as he acted the fool during their missions, there was no chance of him taking Naruto's words as anything other than sarcasm and lies.

"What were you doing?" The jounin's voice made it clear that the time for fooling around was over.

"I told you, sensei, I was training. I found a nice spot in the woods and worked on my taijutsu and came up with a new variation on my Sexy no Jutsu… you wanna see it?"

Kakashi rolled his lone eye and let out a sigh through his nose. "No, but I'm sure I'll have the pleasure some other time."

Naruto shrugged and pulled off his shirt.

Kakashi was silent for a moment and then he said, "Was that _all_ you were doing?"

"What else would I have been doing?" Naruto replied in an annoyed voice as he inwardly cringed. Kakashi was naturally a suspicious person – he was an incredible ninja, after all – and there was no doubt that he'd been leaving clues all over the place that he was more than a genin should have been. That jutsu with the bull, the way he barely paid attention but still knew most of the taijutsu forms being taught to them, and a handful of other mistakes he'd probably made… they would all lead to Kakashi watching him more and more carefully and eventually figuring him out – or at least getting as close as a person could get without assuming time travel had occurred.

"Some one with your reputation should be able to answer that question pretty easily, I'd think," Kakashi replied.

Playing dumb was the only option. Naruto wasn't sure he wanted to keep trying to keep things as close to the same as he could anymore – not that his track record was all that great in that area anyway – but he _was_ sure that he wasn't ready to make that decision yet. "Maybe you could tell me what you think I did, so I'll know what I'm supposed to be denying."

"I wasn't accusing you of anything," Kakashi replied, a smile in his voice, "but at the same time, I have ways of finding out the truth, Naruto. There are jutsu that would have you spilling your darkest secrets in just a few seconds… some that wouldn't leave much of your mind in tact when they were finished."

Naruto let his head fall back so that he was staring up at the cracked plaster on his ceiling and sighed. "Well, when you get a warrant – and probably a member of the police force to perform the jutsu – let me know. I'll be here, sleeping."

"Someone's been reading up on village law." Naruto could hear an edge in Kakashi's voice.

He chuckled tiredly and looked over at the jounin, rubbing the back of his head and trying to sound the way he thought was supposed to. "I get in a lot of trouble."

As his chuckling quickly died, the room fell into silence for a moment while Kakashi digested Naruto's answer and then nodded slowly. "Alright, before I go get a warrant from any one of a dozen people who owe me a favor and _can_ issue one, tell me why you didn't join your teammates once you were feeling better."

"That bastard Sasuke always tries to show me up when we train together. I get more done working on my own." Back when he'd originally been this old, that was exactly how he always felt about Sasuke, so it made for a believable lie… so long as Kakashi wasn't already too suspicious of him.

"Well," Kakashi replied with another roll of his eye, "if you actually did what you were supposed to when we were training or at least tried paying attention, Sasuke wouldn't have such an easy time of it."

"That's harsh, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto pouted. "Someday I'm going to show you just how awesome I am." As soon as the continuation of his part was out of his mouth, Naruto knew that it wasn't really a lie. Someday he _would_ tell Kakashi the truth. He would have to and not just because he would eventually get caught doing more than he should be able to. "Then you and Sakura will forget all about Sasuke," he smiled with what he hoped was a dreamy expression on his face. "Even Sasuke will admit that I'm better than him, he'll probably come begging for me to teach him some of my moves…"

Kakashi shook his head and sighed, but Naruto could tell that the jounin was at least partially convinced that Naruto's lie was something he'd do, especially since the reason he'd given played upon the one sided rivalry he occasionally pretended to have with Sasuke as well as the notions of his stupidity that had been built up amongst the citizens of Konoha over the years and only further confirmed since his return to the past.

"Yes, I'm sure that will be happening _any_ day now." Kakashi closed the book and tucked it into the canvas pouch hanging from his belt behind his back as he headed towards the balcony. "We're meeting tomorrow at eight, same place as usual."

"So noonish by the Tower?"

"See you tomorrow Naruto, don't be late." And then Kakashi was gone.

Naruto wasn't stupid enough to immediately drop his guard. He took his time stripping out of his clothes, putting on his pajamas and sleep cap, and then climbed into bed properly. Obviously Kakashi hadn't suspected him of anything more than screwing around and maybe faking illness to get out of a couple of days of work, if Kakashi had, that conversation would have gone very differently and probably would have ended badly for him.

He shifted around until he was comfortable and was careful to eventually roll so that his back was too his window. Only then did his real emotions show on his face and only then did he let the shaking of his hands become evident. It took a second for him to realize that his hands weren't just shaking from pent up emotion over the loss of Akamaru and – to a lesser extent – Haku, but were actually due, at least a little, to fear. Once he identified the emotion, he could feel it running through his body. He was scared of the damage he'd done, he was scared of the damage that would be done, he was scared of being found out, he was just… scared.

He would definitely have to tell Kakashi, probably soon. Now that he knew his knowledge of the future was potentially useless, he would need a real ally… but not yet. It could wait until the Chuunin Exam, after the second test. After he'd found Orochimaru and Kabuto.

His knowledge of the future might not be totally accurate when it came to anything that he was directly in contact with, but far away events were still on script. Haku and Zabuza were the ones who had gone after Tazuna, and Gato had still shown up with his gang as part of a double-cross. It was everything close to home that was in constant motion and in danger of swinging out of control… which meant he didn't have to worry about predicting them or trying to keep them the same, he'd just have to live them and forget about what used to be – if he could.

His life wouldn't change anything with Orochimaru, however, because nothing he was doing or not doing affected the Snake Sannin. Orochimaru would still be after Sasuke, no matter what and that meant that he would be there, disguised, in the second test. He would be in the forest and he wouldn't realize that there was someone who knew who and what he was. Someone who was waiting for him.

After that, he'd tell Kakashi everything, Jiraiya too, once he found him by the hot springs. Akatsuki would be too difficult for him to deal with on his own. Orochimaru, without a Sharingan and unprepared for what Naruto would be capable of, was vulnerable. Pein, Madra, and the rest of Akatsuki weren't, or at least not so much that a twelve year old genin, no matter how skilled, could handle them on his own.

As he slowly drifted off to a restless sleep, his mind turned back to poor Akamaru and Haku. He hadn't been strong enough or smart enough to save them… he'd failed them… he would redouble his efforts to make sure that something like that never happened again.

ooo

Kakashi sat on a rooftop not far from Naruto apartment and looked through a pair of binoculars as the blond ninja shifted in his bed before lying still and apparently falling asleep. Even after Naruto had appeared to be sleeping for several minutes, Kakashi didn't look away.

Something was wrong with the blond, but it wasn't the problems that were supposed to be there. Over the past few weeks he'd seen Naruto do several un-Naruto like things. Jutsu that shouldn't be known yet, taijutsu forms that were too advanced for him, and eyes that always seemed to be calculating.

The problem was, what did it mean? Jutsu could come from anywhere. A friend, if he had any outside of his team, or even a scroll in the library… they could even be created if the ninja was clever enough. Naruto was clever, but was he clever enough to make up something _useful_? The taijutsu was even easier to explain away. Just watching older ninja practice would be enough to pick up a few things here and there. As for the calculating eyes… the boy was a ninja, he was supposed to be calculating.

And yet, Kakashi didn't like it. He couldn't think of a reason _why_ it should bother him that Naruto wasn't acting like the Naruto that had been described by his Academy instructors, but it did. It bothered him that Naruto knew jutsu he shouldn't have encountered yet. It bothered him more when he saw Naruto accidentally shift into taijutsu forms that he hadn't been formally taught as if they were more natural to him than the basic Academy forms. And it really bothered him that he never felt like he was looking at the _real_ Naruto.

"Minato-sensei," Kakashi whispered as he finally rose and headed for home, "I think there's something wrong with your boy…"

ooo

Naruto's eyes snapped open and he bolted up right in bed, his heart pounding in his chest. It took him several minutes to remember that his nightmare was mostly just that… a nightmare.

He'd dreamed that Haku had accidentally killed not just Akamaru, but also Shino, Hinata, and Kiba. And that Kurenai – who he'd always liked – and even had been talked into spying on by Jiraiya when she was bathing in the hot springs (though they'd both been caught and beaten to within an inch of their lives by another patron before they could see the goods) – had been killed by Zabuza while he'd just sat there watching like an idiot. In his dream, Shino's daughter and Kurenai's son had stood over him and accused him of murdering their parents and of making it so that they would never be born…

Even just thinking about the dream left Naruto suddenly unable to breath. How many people had his foolishness nearly killed? Kurenai and Shino's children were still alive when… whatever… happened and sent him back, they might have gone on and had children of their own and those children could have had children and… if Haku's aim had been a little off, Naruto might have been responsible for the deaths (and nonexistence) of thousands of unborn people, maybe millions if you looked far enough down the line. And then there was the question of what good deeds those children would have done, people they would have saved that would now perish…

His hands squeezed the sheets tightly, wiping the sweat off of them as he tried to swallow. He'd never thought about it like this, but now that he had, he couldn't shake the idea. No man should be put into this sort of position. This was the sort of thing that even a god couldn't handle. The pressure was too much.

A moment later he was running for the bathroom and emptying the meager contents of his stomach into the toilet. He spent the next hour sitting on the bathroom floor, his head resting against the toilet seat and his chest heaving.

He'd never felt like this before. He couldn't even figure out why he was feeling like this now. It had all seemed like a grand adventure, especially after Sakura had taken his advice and started acting more like her adult self. It was all so fun, helping mold his friends into the people they'd be in the future, trying to change Sasuke's fate by giving him more friends so that he could continue looking to the future instead of dwelling on the past. Then Team Eight got the Wave Country mission and reality was dumped on him like a bucket of ice water.

The adventure wasn't nearly so grand now.

ooo

Sakura was alternating between tapping her toe irritably and pacing back and forth while occasionally looking around for Kakashi. He was late, as usual. She should have expected it, but with Naruto missing, she'd have thought that he could find a way to show up early for once or even, at the very least, be on time.

"Sakura. Stop," Sasuke told her. He was leaning against a nearby wall, watching her pace.

"Naruto's missing," she replied as she resumed her pacing, "Kakashi-sensei should at least have gotten here on time so we can go in and tell Hokage-sama what's happened."

"The dobe isn't going to be any less missing in an hour."

"Yeah, but…" Before she could finish, an orange form dropped from the sky and landed next to her. "Naruto!"

He looked up at her and tried to give her his usual lopsided grin, failing horribly. "Hey, Sakura-chan. Sorry I worried you."

Sakura took a step back and then bristled as her lips twisted in a slight scowl. "Who said I was _worried_ about you?" she demanded.

Naruto shrugged and glanced at Sasuke who was no longer bothering to look at either of them.

"Where were you?" Sakura asked after an uncomfortable moment of silence.

"I was training in the woods. I started feeling better and thought I might as well work on some jutsu… so I could show you how amazing I was when I got done," he replied in a monotone voice, as if he were reading a script. He sounded exhausted and… worried?

Sakura frowned in confusion. He was saying all of the words she normally expected to hear out of him, but the words were the only thing about him she recognized as 'Naruto.' "What's wrong?" she asked.

His eyes closed and sighed and then whatever was weighing him down seemed to be pushed aside or at least was hidden. When he looked up at her he was smiling brightly. "Nothing, I'm fine."

His sudden change caught her off guard and she unconsciously leaned forward to peer a little more closely at him. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Of course," he said, still smiling. "Why wouldn't I be? I've had a whole week off from hearing how wonderful Sasuke is. I couldn't be better."

She looked back at Sasuke, wondering what he might think of Naruto's strange behavior, but he had already stopped paying any attention to them and was instead studiously watching the ninja coming and going from the Tower. "Well, alright," she said at last. "I guess I'm glad you're feeling better, even if you're just going to start screwing up our missions again."

Naruto chuckled and then wandered over to the wall Sasuke was leaning against and sat down, letting his head fall back and his eyes close. Two minutes later, he was snoring softly.

It was an odd feeling, Sakura decided, to be worried about Naruto. He'd always been such a nuisance and a screw up, but to see him looking so down was just… wrong. And besides, he wasn't really _that_ much of a nuisance or screw up. Since they'd become Team Seven he'd definitely started to grow up. He hadn't been pulling any stupid pranks, he didn't tell nearly as many gross jokes, and he'd completely stopped trying to get her to go out with him. He'd even gone so far as to offer her some very good advice… which she would thank him for as soon as Sasuke wasn't around to hear it and realize that she hadn't backed off all on her own.

It was weirder still to see him so tired that he couldn't even stay awake for five minutes. He was usually so full of energy, but then again, he _had_ been sick just a few days ago. Not that that had stopped him from apparently going out to exercise all day yesterday. Such exertion seemed stupid to Sakura. If he was sick, he should have stayed home, even when he started feeling better. Didn't he know you needed time to recover even after your body wasn't showing symptoms anymore?

The possibility occurred to her that Naruto might only be pretending to be sleeping… in fact, he might have only been pretending to be as sick as he'd claimed to be – she had no doubt that he _had_ been a little sick, but it would be just like him to play it up for attention. Yes, that made far more sense. It was Naruto, after all, he was always doing stupid things like this even if he'd started acting a little more mature lately.

There was no reason to worry about him. She wasn't worried about him. Because really, Sakura told herself as she resolved not to look at Naruto anymore, she didn't care even if he was depressed…

Really.

She glanced his way again, just to make sure he wasn't in danger of tipping over or anything. Not that she cared if he did, of course, but if he fell then he'd wake up (or _pretend_ to anyway) and make a big fuss about it.

Once she was sure that he would be fine, she went back to not worrying about him… except when she glanced his way just to make sure that he was still alright.

ooo

Naruto didn't act sick during their mission. He didn't look for attention either, though Sakura couldn't help but give him some as they worked. In fact, he didn't do anything that would give anyone a reason to look or yell at him… which wasn't a very Naruto-ish thing to do.

He was, for lack of a better word, flawless on the mission.

Their job for the day was to repair a rundown bathhouse that was under new management. No sooner had they been put to work than a dozen Naruto's were running around completing their jobs – plus several that hadn't even been assigned to them – with a single minded focus that the rest of the team had never seen out of Naruto. Old bricks were knocked out while new ones were quickly put into place. Cement was stirred perfectly and applied properly. The roof was patched without a single mishap. And, most shockingly, Sasuke was saved from being splashed with gross water when Sakura accidentally dropped her hammer into one of the old baths. A clone had simply reached out, pulled Sasuke out of the way and then cheerfully told Sakura that Sasuke didn't smell _that_ bad.

When the mission was over, Kakashi took them out to one of the training grounds to work on a new set of taijutsu moves. As he walked them through it, he made a few off hand comments about Naruto's supposed training and wondered aloud if he shouldn't just turn the training over to the blond to teach them his new moves.

For a second Naruto wondered if he was being serious, and then was confused by why Kakashi would be so blatantly cruel as that was usually not his style, but then he realized that the jounin was only trying to get a _normal_ reaction out of him. It wasn't going to work. His course was set now. He was going to change things, including people's perception of him, and he was going to do it now. To hell with the consequences.

When Naruto's only reply was a roll of his eyes and a small smirk, Kakashi shook his head and then went back through the movements once more before having Naruto and Sasuke spar with each other while he and Sakura did the same.

The sparring session was boring enough that Naruto could have done it in his sleep. This, unfortunately, allowed his mind to wander towards a far away bridge and the group of people he'd nearly gotten killed… including the puppy he had let down and the young Inuzuka who was probably beyond devastated at the moment.

As they continued to go through the motions, Sasuke threw a punch, bringing his other arm up to block any counter and Naruto felt a muscle in his shoulder twitch as an instinct told him to throw a punch that would end the match. Even with his mind somewhere else, a second instinct halted the movement initiated by the first.

"Stop," he whispered, suddenly back in the here and now. "You did that wrong."

It had only been for a second, but he'd seen it. Sasuke had an opening in his defenses that wasn't supposed to be there.

"What are you talking about, dobe?" the Uchiha asked.

"You did that wrong," Naruto insisted again. "Your arms weren't in the right spot."

Sasuke scowled. "When you score a hit, then you can talk. You're just sleepwalking through this, anyway."

"I _said_ you did it wrong," Naruto growled, suddenly feeling angry and not completely sure why. "Do it right."

"I _am_."

"No, you're not. If you do it that way, you're going to get yourself killed like…" his voice broke off as he sucked in a sharp breath, the reason for his anger laid out in front of him. He tried to calm his suddenly taut nerves, but it didn't seem to work. "Do it right."

"Whatever," Sasuke replied with a roll of his eyes, dismissing the blond's warning.

Naruto's jaw clenched. "Fine, do it again," he hissed.

Sasuke stepped back into the first stance and then began coming at Naruto, his arms twisting, turning, and occasionally lashing out as he went through the motions. Naruto backed away, blocking as he needed to, and waiting for the defect he'd seen before. For a second he began to wonder if perhaps he'd been mistaken, but then it appeared.

Sasuke's punch came in just a little too high, his blocking arm just a little out of position…

Naruto ducked under the punch and his fist shot up through Sasuke's defenses, whistling past the taller boy's ear.

"You're doing it wrong," Naruto said again, his voice trembling with anger and a new emotion… fear. "You're arms are in the wrong spots. The only reason I didn't hit you is because Sakura would be pissed at me."

Sasuke's eyes flickered towards Kakashi, who had his back to them while he corrected some mistake Sakura had made, and then looked down his nose at Naruto. "Look," he hissed, "that was luck. There's no way a dead-last like you could ever hope to beat me. I don't know what you think you're seeing, but I'm doing it _exactly_ like Kakashi showed us."

Naruto scowled and stepped back into the ready position.

Sasuke began again and once more Naruto followed along, putting up a marginal defense and waiting for the right moment.

This time his fist didn't miss, it caught Sasuke square in the jaw, rocking his head back. Sasuke took a single, stumbling step back, and then Naruto's leg swept out, taking him off his feet. He landed on his back with a grunt as the air was forced out of him and looked up in surprise as Naruto's hand chopped down, stopping a hair's breadth from his neck.

A killing blow.

The two boys stared at each other, both knowing the truth: if Naruto had wanted to, he could have killed Sasuke right there.

"Still think it was just luck?" Naruto asked, leaning down so that only Sasuke could hear him. The Uchiha turned away as if trying to deny the truth they both knew. "If you did something like that on a real mission, you could have been kil…" he stopped and swallowed hard. "I'm trying to help you, but you think you're so much better than me that you can't even see what I could do for you. This isn't a game, asshole. If you go out and get yourself… I mean, if you _died_, do you have any idea…" he took a deep breath, collected himself, and then tried again. "I would have thought you of all people would know better. You know what it's like… what it's like to see someone you love get…" his voice trailed off once more, unable to finish.

Something warm and wet hit Sasuke's face. He blinked in surprise and looked up at Naruto. The blond's lips were twisted as he tried to choke down a sob, but his eyes were full of tears that he wasn't able to hold back. "Bastard," the blond whispered, his voice choked with emotion.

For a long moment, Naruto sat there staring down Sasuke, and then he wiped a dirty, orange sleeve across his eyes to clear the tears, took a deep breath to regain his composure, and stood up, leaving a perplexed Sasuke lying on the ground. "I'm out of here," he grumbled. "I've already got this down and Kakashi-sensei obviously should be focusing in on the _genius_ who just got himself killed because he was too stuck up to listen."

Kakashi looked up as Naruto stormed off, watching the blond for a moment and then turning to Sasuke with a raised eyebrow as the Uchiha slowly stood up and dusted off his pants. "You lost a training partner, Sasuke-kun."

Sasuke grunted noncommittally and shrugged.

"Is there a reason why?" Kakashi pressed.

"We were done with our sparring already."

"Well, that's pretty impressive. I think five minutes might be a new record."

Sasuke scowled, but didn't respond. Instead he stuffed his fists in his pocket and walked away.

Sakura watched him go and then looked up at Kakashi and asked, "Um, what just happened, sensei?"

Kakashi seemed to wink at her – unless it was only an extended blink – and his mask shifted in the way she'd come to identify as him smiling. "I think Sasuke-kun just tasted defeat for the first time… and he doesn't seem to have enjoyed it."

"_Naruto_ beat Sasuke-kun?" She couldn't believe it. Kakashi had to be making a mistake.

"Looks that way, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, but… _Naruto_?"

Kakashi shrugged. "Maybe he really _was_ learning something in the woods."

His gaze shifted back towards the spot Sasuke had rounded the corner and something odd flashed in his eye, as if another piece to a puzzle were clicking into place. Sakura almost opened her mouth to ask what he was thinking, but before she could he suggested that they get back to work – unless she also felt like she already had the new form down.

The next hour and a half was the longest period of direct tutelage she'd ever gotten from Kakashi and by the end of it she could actually see the improvements in her abilities. She was so pleased with herself that she completely forgot about the look in Kakashi's eye and Naruto's odd behavior that day.

ooo

Naruto didn't even see the startled looks of his fellow villagers as he stormed down the road towards his apartment. Had he been paying attention, the might have found it funny to see some of the same faces that had harassed him during his youth suddenly filled with terror as if he actually _were _the Kyuubi returned. Perhaps seeing him in such a rage, his eyes narrowed, and his jaw clenched looked to them like the first signs that he would soon be unleashing the demon.

None of that mattered to him at the moment. He didn't care about their idiotic fears and was incapable of laughing at the humorous sight of them tripping over themselves to get out of his way. He just couldn't stop fuming over how careless Sasuke had been during their training.

He didn't want to stop fuming.

If the anger left him, the underlying fear would have free reign, and he couldn't handle that right now.

It was much easier to just be angry – really, really angry.

Angry with Sasuke, of course, though really the anger was directed at himself for having not thought through all the implications of being in the past and taking chances that could have gotten people killed, that _had_ gotten people killed. Regardless of what had happened in the original timeline, his friends could be killed at any moment during this second go.

Sasuke didn't even realize how fragile his own life was… or how important. What was worse, he was too stuck up to take help when it was offered or criticism when a flaw was pointed out. Kakashi probably would have caught the mistake and he would have helped Sasuke fix it, but if he somehow missed it because he was distracted by something Naruto did or said, or didn't do or…

Naruto swallowed hard. There was definitely too much pressure involved in time travel. It seemed like the only thing he could do to protect his precious people was to watch over them. All of them. Everyday, all the time, he wouldn't let them out of his sight, any of them. Even if it meant sending out a constant flow of clones and never sleeping again, he wouldn't let anyone touch a single hair on their heads.

_'Yeah,'_ he thought as crazy plans began forming in his emotionally clouded mind._ 'I'll just have to get something that will keep me awake and alert. Soldier pills might do it or maybe I could just break into the hospital and steal… something. It would be labeled, it wouldn't be _that_ hard to find. Then I'll send clones to Suna to watch over Gaara and Temari and even Kankuro. And then I'll have to find Tsunade-baachan and __Ero-sennin, that'll be a bit harder, but—'_

"Naruto?" Iruka's voice cut through Naruto's wild thoughts like a knife. "Did Kakashi let you go already?"

Naruto blinked stupidly and looked up at his former teacher and longtime mentor. With his thoughts still swirling around the idea of saving everyone his face was open and emotions unhidden. Too late he realized his mistake and tried to smile. "Uh, hi, Iruka-sensei," he managed.

Iruka must have read something in the moment before Naruto buried what he was feeling because the chuunin's eyes softened and he placed a warm hand on Naruto's shoulder. "Are you alright, Naruto?" he asked, his voice filled with genuine concern.

Naruto looked down and swallowed. Iruka had always been able to read him, even when he tried to hide things, and, perhaps for that reason, Naruto had always struggled with saying more than he meant too when they talked.

Iruka waited for a few seconds and then looked away as though suddenly finding the side of a nearby building extremely interesting. "You know," he said casually, "I was just thinking about how long it's been since I had a nice bowl of ramen." He sniffed quietly and scratched at his cheek with one finger. "Ramen's one of those foods that just can't be enjoyed by yourself, though. But, if I can convince you to help me out by eating with me, I'd be willing to treat you… just so I don't have to go eat something else, of course."

Naruto couldn't help but smile. "Yeah," he said quietly, "I think I can help you out."

They didn't talk much as they made their way to the Ichiraku Ramen Bar. A few times Iruka tried to make small talk, but it was obvious that Naruto's heart wasn't in it so the chuunin let the conversation fizzle into silence for the rest of their trip.

The bar was thankfully not crowded when they arrived, the late lunch rush was over and the earlier dinner rush was still an hour or so off. They sat down at their usual spots and ordered without having to look at the menu (it had been quite some time since either of them had needed to look over their choices), miso for Naruto and beef for Iruka.

Uncharacteristically, Naruto did not dive into his bowl with relish. Usually he ate as if it were the first meal he'd had in days, finishing quickly and then trying to order a second and even a third bowl – Iruka suspected that he only did this when he was being treated. This time, however, he ate slowly and spent a good portion of his time stirring his noodles around in the broth for no discernable reason.

"Do you want to talk about what's bothering you?" Iruka asked after several minutes of silence.

Naruto shrugged and resumed his stirring. "I don't know if you'd understand."

"I know with my youthful appearance and upbeat personality it might be hard to believe, but I _am_ ten years older than you, Naruto," Iruka replied with a smile. "I doubt you've managed to find something in your first few weeks as ninja that I haven't had to deal with already."

Naruto caught himself just as he began to consider laying everything out to the chuunin. Not for the first time – though probably for the first time in this lifetime – he wondered if Iruka didn't have some sort of bloodline ability that subtly encouraged people to be truthful when they spoke with him. He had plenty of years worth of evidence to support the theory, should he ever want to make his case, but still felt that it was more likely that Iruka was just one of those people you always felt like you could trust and who never intentionally did anything to contradict that assessment of him.

"I guess I just realized that my friends… er, _teammates_… might not always come back from missions. And I might… I might s-screw up a-and… get them killed." A shudder ran through his body and he hastily wiped at his eyes again. "But I won't let that happen again. I'll make sure that I'm always watching over them and keeping them safe."

Iruka frowned and brought another clump of noodles and meat to his mouth while he chose his words carefully. "You can't protect the people you care about all the time," he said after he had swallowed.

"Yes," Naruto replied evenly, "_I_ can. I can make it so you and Kakashi-sensei and Sakura and Sasuke and everyone else are always safe! No one will ever be allowed to hurt any of you, not unless they're stepping over my dead body first!"

Iruka's head snapped back as if struck by Naruto's words and he sucked in a deep breath through his nose. Naruto suddenly realized just how loudly he'd shouted the last part. He looked around sheepishly and then slouched down with a quiet apology and returned to stirring his noodles.

The two sat in an uncomfortable silence for a long time before Iruka said, "I felt the way you do once. It was right at the end of the last Great War. My team had only just graduated and we were given a simple scouting mission. By today's standards, that seems like a lot to give to a new team of genin, but back then things were different and necessity forced more dangerous missions on younger teams."

Naruto knew all about wartime sacrifices. He'd sent more children than he liked to think about to their deaths because there was no one else to take the mission. Every time one of those teams came back bearing a body bag – or didn't come back at all – it was like being stabbed in the chest and having the blade twisted. He'd often wondered how the Third dealt with it, perhaps one day he'd ask the old man.

"We were ambushed by some Rock-nin and my friend, Aoi-chan, whom I'd known since before I even entered the Academy, was killed." He looked directly into Naruto's eyes and said, "I was in charge of watching for traps and ambushes, but I missed something and my friend was killed because of it."

Naruto's mouth fell open. Impossible as it seemed, he'd never heard this story before. "How did you…"

"I didn't," Iruka replied quickly, correctly guessing the question. "You never really get over something like that. You never really get over losing a friend no matter how it happened. You move on – eventually – but you don't get over it.

"For a while, all I could think about was what else I could have done that would have saved her. Once Aoi-chan had been replaced on the team, we would go out on missions and I would jump at every sound, I was always looking over my teammates' shoulders, pushing them out of the way if I felt like they weren't doing something right or were in danger… and our team was eventually broken up because my teammates could no longer work with me."

Naruto could see what Iruka was trying to say and why the team hadn't remained together. He could even see the obvious parallels between Iruka's story and his own idiotic plan – and it _was_ an idiotic plan – but his head wasn't completely back to where it should be. Even temporary Hokages who are spouting off wild, stupid plans that they know are wild and stupid still feel defensive over their stupidity when they're called on it. "But you were just protecting them!"

"Yes, but we couldn't complete our missions because I was always trying to do everything for everyone." Iruka smiled sadly and then said, "I think they understood at first since they didn't start getting angry or telling me to stop until later. Eventually, though, they resented me for acting like I was the only one who knew how to do anything. They didn't speak to me for a long time after our team broke up. I was trying to protect them, but what I was really telling them was that I didn't trust them… and that I didn't _acknowledge_ their ability to protect themselves."

It had been a long time since he and Iruka had talked about Naruto's desire to be acknowledged. Technically, it had been a long time since he and Iruka had talked, period. Outside of a few pleasantries exchanged while he and his team were getting their assignments, Naruto really hadn't seen much of his old teacher since he'd woken up in a twelve year olds body and before that it had been many years since Iruka was killed. That didn't stop him from catching Iruka's point, and being forced to see the wisdom in it, even if he hated to admit that his stupid plan was just that, stupid.

"Wouldn't it be better to have them resent you, but still be alive, then to have them be dead and not care one way or the other?" he asked, feebly trying to defend the plan that he'd already accepted as foolish and pointless.

Iruka looked him square in the eye and replied, "Wouldn't it be better to have the village resent _you_, while you live out the rest of your days in the safety of your apartment, than to have you out there trying to earn their acknowledgement even if it gets you killed in the process – at which point they probably won't care about you one way or the other?"

Since returning to the past, Naruto had often felt like everyone around him was talking to him like he was just a little kid who didn't know anything. It didn't bother him, because he knew in their eyes he _was_ a little kid who didn't know anything. But until this conversation with Iruka, he'd never actually felt like the little kid they saw him as. He'd always felt like the Hokage – or _temporary_ Hokage – that he knew he really was. Sitting here, talking with Iruka, however, he was a young and foolish genin. Iruka had cut out the heart of his argument as easily as he might have pointed out that Naruto had mislabeled the locations of the five great countries on a map (which, if memory served, he had done on a great many occasions).

The idea that every little detail of everyone's life depended on him either acting certain ways at specific times or else watching their every move to keep them safe had been a poor reaction to Sasuke's pigheadedness and to the tragic event that had made him more sensitive than he would normally have been about Sasuke's actions. He already understood that he couldn't possibly predict the future with the accuracy that he'd once assumed; now it was clear that he wouldn't be able to just force everyone to be safe either. If nothing else, his talk with Iruka had been enough to pull him out of the foolish notion that he should send a horde of clones out to stand guard over everyone.

Naruto looked down at his bowl and sighed, his ramen was starting to get cold already. He supposed it didn't really matter since he didn't have much of an appetite anyway. "Iruka-sensei," he asked at last as a question occurred to him, "if you could go back in time and save your friend, would you?"

"Of course," the chuunin replied without hesitation.

"What if she died anyway?"

Iruka thought about question for a full minute before finally answering. "It would be worse, I think, the second time. Knowing that I should have been able to save her, but still failing. I think… I think I wouldn't be able to get past that for a long, long time, but at some point I'd probably realize how happy she would have been, knowing I cared enough to try to go back to fix things. Maybe that would get me through it… eventually."

"What if you saved her, but lots of other people died because of some other mistake you made?"

Iruka sighed and ate one final mouthful of his ramen and then pushed the bowl away. "I don't know. We all affect people in ways that we don't realize, so changing things we've done could cause even more things to change than we planned on. I think everyone asks: 'what if I could go back, knowing what I know now?' but it's probably for the best that it can't happen. That sort of power is too much for one person to have."

He rose, pulling his wallet from one of the pockets on his green chuunin vest, and dropping the appropriate amount of money on the counter. "Thanks for eating with me, Naruto," he said with a smile as he patted Naruto on the shoulder, "you saved me from having to eat something good for me. If you still want to talk, I've got a little while left before I have to get back to work."

Naruto looked up at him and smiled, feeling better than he had all week. "Nah, I need to get home and get some rest. Kakashi-sensei is a slave driver!"

Iruka smiled in understanding and turned to leave but was stopped by Naruto's hand catching him by the sleeve.

"Iruka-sensei," the blond bit his lip and took a deep breath. "Thanks… for dinner I mean, and…"

Iruka inclined his head graciously. "I'm always around if you need me… or if you just want some company while you eat." Then he turned and walked back towards the Tower.

Naruto took a deep calming breath and let it out slowly. The pressure was still there, along with the fear of messing things up unintentionally, but it wasn't as powerful as it had been an hour before. He hadn't come back on purpose and there was nothing he could do to make it so it hadn't happened and doing nothing was just as likely to cause problems as doing anything. He might make mistakes, but they would be just that, _mistakes_.

He would have to do what he could and hope for the best.

o

o

A/N: I hope this worked okay. This is probably the chapter that I've been the least content with so far because it was quite different when I originally wrote it. See, originally, Naruto was supposed to think all of Team Eight was dead… so he was supposed to be quite depressed all throughout this chapter. But as I worked on the Wave Country Saga, I just couldn't see him forgetting what had happened to Sasuke. It was just too big and emotional an event for it to slip his mind. So now I have this chapter with two scenes that I really liked – Sasuke getting punched and Iruka and Naruto having ramen – but a very key event surrounding them completely changed… Well, it is what it is. Hopefully, even if it isn't great, it didn't totally suck.

If nothing else, hopefully those first few paragraphs helped explain why I've had Naruto acting so foolish during the past few chapters (and even before that, really). If you think you know the future, you aren't going to pretend that you don't, you'll let your future knowledge guide you… or at least that's how I see it.

Anyway, please take the time to review. Even if it's just "I liked it" or "Meh, it wasn't the single worst piece of writing I've ever read," I'd still like to see it.


	14. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

o

_"I'm sorry, Naruto-sama, there was nothing we could do."_

_Naruto closed his eyes and fought back the urge to bang his head on his desk. Another day, another mission that resulted in three body bags coming home and this one was going to be particularly hard to take. First things, first though. "What happened?"_

_"It was an ambush… we think probably near the river, here. Kiba says fifteen to twenty Sound-nin, but the scents were old so it was difficult to be certain. Damage to the surrounding area seems to indicate that Konohamaru-san and his team fought bravely, they would have been far too outnumbered to have much hope of survival… but they didn't go easy. We think they may have taken nearly two-thirds of the enemy down with them!"_

_Despite his best efforts to remain calm, hearing the pride in the man's voice about how well Konohamaru had died was too much to take. "Yes," he snapped louder than he should have as he rose up from the desk and slammed his fists down on it, "I'm sure he and Moegi's mothers will be happy to hear that even though they have to plan funerals instead of a wedding, at least their children died bravely!"_

_The man paled and had the sense to look abashed. "I… yes, of course… forgive me, Naruto-sama…"_

_Naruto sighed and sat back down. Obviously he hadn't been ready for this job when it had dropped into his lap. Ideally, he was supposed to have a previous Hokage to call on for advice when he needed it, at least early on. Instead he'd woken up one morning to find the village in an uproar – Tsunade-baachan dead – and the position of Hokage unofficially laid at his doorstep, with little to no time to grieve for woman who was like an aunt to him – a really, _really_ old aunt. Damn Danzo and his opportunistic stupidity. "No, it's not your fault. I'm just… never mind. Is there anything else?"_

_"No, sir, all other patrols are reporting no signs of aggression or infiltration."_

_Naruto nodded and closed his eyes, trying to will away the emotions swirling inside of him. He would grieve later; right now he had to be the Hokage. "Alright, if anything comes in, I'll be visiting Konohamaru, Moegi, and Udon's parents. Shikamaru should be getting back from Suna soon, if he arrives before I'm done, tell him to go home and get some sleep. I'll see him in the morning."_

_"Understood, Naruto-sama."_

_"Dismissed."_

_Naruto turned his back on the door as the chuunin quickly hurried away. Outside the village was on alert, but seemed peaceful from the Tower. It was an illusion, of course, but it was normally one that he enjoyed pretending was real. Once he was sure he was alone, he lowered his head into his hands and wept bitter, silent tears. _

_Konohamaru was gone and no illusion would allow him to pretend otherwise._

_He would never get to laugh at any of Konohamaru's ridiculous jutsu. He wouldn't have the opportunity to yell at Konohamaru and Udon for continuously rushing into the room every time they heard the slightest "suspicious" noise. He wouldn't get to tease Moegi and Konohamaru whenever he caught the two of them in slightly compromising positions anymore. He wouldn't get to preside over his friends' wedding…_

_"You killed me, Boss," a voice whispered in his ear._

_Naruto spun around, his eyes wide. The room was strangely dark now, every shadow was deeper and darker than he'd ever seen them._

_"You sent us on that mission… you _KILLED_ us!"_

_"Who's there?" Naruto demanded. He wanted to protect himself, or run screaming from the room, but all he could do was sit there and look around, feeling the terror creeping up on him. "Show yourself!"_

_The ground in front of him rippled like dark, polluted water and then three forms slowly up from within it. Even in the dark, he recognized them instantly – not that there was anyone else who called him "Boss."_

_"You killed us, Boss," Konohamaru said again. His face was disfigured and there was a gory hole in his chest that dripped blood all over the floor. "You killed us. We were supposed to live long, happy lives, but you destroyed that for us."_

_Naruto tried to back away from them, but his feet wouldn't move._

_The three stepped closer, decaying hands reaching for him, and then…_

ooo

Naruto's eyes snapped open as he woke, shaking bodily from the nightmare with his sweaty hands tightly clenching his sheets and his chest heaving. After a moment, he closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, and then got up to prepare for the day. It was still very early, but he had no desire to go back to sleep. He hadn't really had to deal with nightmares since waking up in the past, but those days had apparently come to an end on what was supposed to be "The _Great _Naruto Bridge."

It was probably for the best anyway. In the weeks before Team Eight was given the Wave Country mission, he'd almost been pretending that the future was just a dream and not a frightening reality that was looming ever closer. The nightmares, disturbing as they were, at least insured that that reality was in the forefront of his mind when he woke every morning. They didn't keep him from enjoying his time with his once-dead friends, but they added an edge to his joy that hadn't been there before.

It had been a week now since he'd returned from the Wave Country. A week since he'd realized that he couldn't just sit back and let the past play out the way he remembered it because it simply _couldn't_ play out without him acting the same way. A week since he'd quite summarily kicked Sasuke's ass in their training session. A week since he stopped making any mistakes during their missions and started showing his team that he was far from the dead-last they thought of him as. A week since the nightmares had begun again…

And yet, he'd made only minimal progress.

Sasuke was better about accepting help, so long it was during their missions or training time with Kakashi. If Naruto spotted a mistake and pointed it out, he would _grudgingly_ listen and make the correction, but he still wouldn't accept help in any other form – and really, he hardly ever made mistakes during the missions and training time. Naruto had lost count of the number of times he'd asked Sasuke to come train with him or if he'd like to see a cool jutsu or if he'd like to spar after Kakashi let them go. Thinking back on it now, it was probably the sparring request that had turned things slightly sour since that had been one of the first ways he'd tried to entice his friend to train with him. The question had been an innocent one, but if Sasuke had taken it to be a reference to _that_ sparring session… well, his reaction wasn't totally unexpected.

The problem, Naruto decided as he headed into the bathroom and began to brush his teeth, was that Sasuke was too hung up on being the best and proving his strength. If being beaten by someone "lower" than him was an affront to his pride, taking pointers from such a person would be even worse. He'd never go for it, at least not the way he was now. In the past, on their way to the Wave Country, they'd had to rely on each other in the heat of battle when Zabuza ambushed them. There hadn't been time to worry about who was better, they were too concerned with trying to survive. Then they'd met Haku and seen that there were kids out there who were far stronger than them. And finally they'd been given the tree climbing exercise to help prepare them for a future battle against Zabuza.

Maybe they needed a threat like Zabuza hanging over them for Sasuke to swallow his pride. And maybe they needed a type of training where they both _appeared_ to start on equal footing – or with Sasuke way out in front while Naruto slowly made ground on him – for them to develop a friendly rivalry that transcended pride and ego… for a time.

_'Great,'_ Naruto grumbled to himself as he spit, _'all I need is to do is find another missing-nin to come attack us and then back off while we train for a week so we can all be buddies… how hard could _that_ be?'_

With that happy thought running through his head, Naruto ate a light breakfast and then headed for the nearest training grounds. He was up so he might as well do something more constructive with his time than fret over trying to get Sasuke to like him.

_'Ugh, I sound like I've becoming as Uchihatarded as Sakura ever was…'_ he groaned as he made his way across the darkened village.

ooo

Sasuke stared out the window of his room, watching the moon as it fell towards the horizon and struggling with a question that had plagued him for a week.

What was Naruto's secret? How could he have improved so much in such a sort period of time?

It annoyed him that he was dwelling on it as much as he was and even more so that he couldn't think of a logical answer to it, or at least not an answer that he was willing to accept. One day Naruto was an annoying – though admittedly fairly nice and relatively friendly – kid who could hardly tighten his sandal straps without causing a small catastrophe and then he was suddenly some sort of competent ninja… a competent ninja who could have killed Sasuke if he'd wanted to. It just didn't make sense.

Naruto couldn't have always been this good, that much Sasuke was sure of. The blond had had nearly flunked out of the Academy before finally graduating – they only let you take classes until you were fourteen, if you hadn't passed the final by then, you were done no matter what – and his personality wasn't one that would accept that sort of shame. He was… or had been… too hungry for attention to be so terrible if he had even a hint of greatness in him. He would have flaunted his abilities and lapped up the praise they earned him… unless it had all been a charade from the beginning and Naruto had never really been the attention starved class clown he pretended to be.

Sasuke shook his head. No, that couldn't be it. Naruto definitely _had_ been what he seemed, he was just… different… now. So what was the secret?

It would be easy to go and ask. Naruto had been practically begging to train with him all week, plus he'd come right out and told Sasuke that he could help him, but if Sasuke accepted the offer or asked for help, then he was admitting that he needed something from Naruto.

How could Sasuke ever hope to kill his brother if he needed _Naruto's_ help? Itachi had never needed help; he'd never struggled with a concept in class or needed extra work with his taijutsu or ninjutsu that required another person to show him where he was making his mistakes. He'd never even needed their father's help with anything as near as Sasuke could remember. Itachi had simply been born great. If Sasuke wanted to reach those sorts of heights and beyond, then he needed to be great on his own as well, he needed to find his strength on his own like his brother had. He couldn't possibly let Itachi show him up in even one area or he would fail in his main goal, and if failed… then why was he still alive?

There was a way that would, in a sense, allow him to keep his pride and still learn what Naruto had found that was helping him grow by leaps and bounds. The problem was that it was still just like asking for help… only without the asking. Unfortunately it couldn't be helped, he needed to know how Naruto was improving if for no other reason than so he could stop dwelling on it.

His mind made up, Sasuke headed out the door and made his way towards Naruto's apartment. For Naruto to have made such large strides so quickly, he had to be training pretty hard. It was getting to be light out, but there was still at least four hours before they were supposed to meet Kakashi (which meant five or even six hours before they _actually_ had to meet Kakashi), perfect conditions for extra training – if it was being done in the mornings. Sasuke would simply tail Naruto to wherever he trained and watch what he did. If it was some ground breaking new method of training, then Sasuke would 'borrow' it without mentioning it to Naruto; if it was just Naruto goofing off, then Sasuke would be back at square one, but at least he'd know what _wasn't_ helping Naruto's development.

The trip was quick and no one saw him. He considered this to be an extremely good thing because he was well known in the village – the handsome genius with the tragic past and all that – and anyone who saw him might wonder what he was up to, which might lead to people talking about what he was up to, which might lead to someone figuring out what he was up to… not that he cared what they thought, of course, but he didn't want his good name being soiled by accusations of going to Uzumaki Naruto for help. It was hard enough convincing himself that he wasn't doing that without having the whole village thinking was and talking about it whenever he walked down the street. Plus, if word got out then Naruto would eventually hear about it and would probably gloat and rub it in his face. No, this had to be a completely covert mission.

When he reached Naruto's apartment, the lights were off. He considered watching from a nearby rooftop and waiting to see when Naruto would leave, but decided that it would be better to be bold than bored if Naruto planned on sleeping in today. Three short hops were all it took to get him up to the proper landing. The curtains weren't even closed.

Inside the place was surprisingly clean, cleaner than it had been when Sasuke and Sakura had visited during Naruto's "illness" – if he was ever really sick. The dishes were done, the floors swept… and the bed was made!

_'I was right,'_ Sasuke thought with grim satisfaction. Of course, being right was only half the battle, now he had to figure out what Naruto was doing. Unfortunately the blond could be anywhere in the village at this point. He might be at one of the training grounds, he might be in one of the buildings (if he was getting help from another villager) he might even be in the woods around the village (if his help came from outside the village). It would take hours to search everywhere, even if he knew where 'everywhere' was.

With a grumbled curse, Sasuke decided to head home and wait for the appointed time to meet with his team. Tomorrow he'd be earlier and if that didn't work then he'd simply skip a night of sleep and stake out the apartment so that he was sure he didn't miss his opportunity.

He wasn't completely sure why it bothered him so much that Naruto was improving or why he was so obsessed with finding his method – other than because it might help him get stronger himself and get that much closer to killing Itachi – but he would worry about it later… after he knew what it was Naruto was hiding.

ooo

As usual, Team Seven assembled quite a while before Kakashi was likely to show up. They all knew the jounin was going to be late, but they also knew that if they were late also there was a chance he'd decide to be unpredictable and show up early for a change. It was a little annoying – especially to Sakura who felt that adults (and everyone else) should be punctual when other people were going to be waiting for them – but they were used to it by now and their grumbling when the jounin finally did arrive was more for show than anything. Besides, it was nice spending time together in the morning with just the three of them, even if Sasuke rarely spoke during these times.

Naruto initially tried to use the spare time to talk Sasuke into training with him that afternoon, but quickly grew tired of butting his head against that wall and wandered over to talk to Sakura instead.

Sakura was really his one major success since waking up in the past. She no longer tried to hit him – or at least didn't swing as hard when she did – and was already starting to blossom into the wonderful woman she'd been when he last had the pleasure of her constant company. Her training with Sasuke was having obvious benefits in her abilities and her maturity (thanks to Naruto's gentle nudge in the right direction) in handling her feelings for the Uchiha made for far less uncomfortable moments than Naruto remembered the team having originally… though that area was probably helped just as much or even more by the fact that he wasn't constantly asking her out or trying to start fights with Sasuke.

For the next half hour, the two of them talked about their last couple of missions, joking about funny things that had happened or had been said, and made wagers on how much longer Kakashi would be. Naruto's guess of forty-five minutes proved to be closest, earning him a bowl of ramen, Sakura's treat, later in the week.

"But just as friends," Sakura reminded him playfully and they both laughed until Kakashi began his usual summary of their itinerary. Then they headed to the Tower to get their mission.

Until they reached the closed doors to the room where missions were normally handed out, the day was going about the same as all of them had in the last week. In fact, if it hadn't been for an aide carrying a message inside for Sarutobi, after being cleared by the two chuunin oddly guarding the door, things might not have seemed different at all… at least not for a couple of minutes longer.

ooo

When Kurenai led her mentally exhausted team back into Konohagakure she'd had every intention of dismissing them and going through the debriefing on her own so that they – particularly Kiba – wouldn't have to go through recounting everything that had happened to them, especially since they barely understood half of it anyway. There was a more important place for Kiba to be, even if he all he'd be doing there was sitting around feeling useless, and Hinata and Shino would probably want to either go home or be with their teammates.

Unfortunately, the report that she'd had sent by messenger bird from Ginoza had beaten them back to the village – as she'd known it would – and the Hokage wanted to see her whole team. When they were informed this upon their arrival, she'd instantly wished that she'd been intentionally imprecise in her report instead of succinctly honest.

Now her team, minus one, stood before the Third as she recounted what had happened to them from the time they left the village about two weeks earlier until they woke up after their battle on the bridge. Sarutobi listened intently to their story, only stopping them for clarification twice. Kurenai was grateful for the lack of interruptions. Kiba had been extremely touchy and unpredictable since the bridge incident, there was no telling how he might react to having to listen to the story over and over. He'd have to learn to deal with these sorts of things eventually, but it took experience and maturity that he didn't possess quite yet.

"Kiba, Hinata, Shino and Akamaru were found on the bridge by the villagers after Inari had mobilized them to defend their village from Gato and his men, they found me unconscious on one of the docks a short distance away," she said as her explanation of their mission reached the peculiar part. "Several villagers claim to have seen us… lots of us… in a stand off with the several dozen men Gato had brought with him. Apparently Gato was killed before they arrived, he was found with a kunai between his eyes at the end of the bridge."

"And yet, none of you remember such a confrontation?" the Third asked, his brow furrowed.

"The problem isn't that we don't remember it, it's that it couldn't possibly have been us," Kurenai replied. "I was definitely no where near the bridge by that point – though I have no idea how I made it back to land after being knocked into the ocean – and Kiba, Hinata, and Shino are certain that they were beaten by Haku."

"Wouldn't the simplest answer be that Zabuza and Haku turned on their former employer?"

"Possibly," Kurenai conceded, "but neither of them were ever seen using kunai and… Kiba thinks Zabuza, at least, is dead and a couple of villagers say they saw two other bodies that disappeared when whatever looked like us vanished."

"Oh?"

"There _was_ a large amount of blood on the bridge close to where I was fighting Zabuza. Kiba thought it smelled like Zabuza's blood."

"It _was_ his blood," Kiba growled irritably.

The Third nodded thoughtfully and puffed on his pipe in silence for a moment. "Your initial report mentioned something about the person or persons who assisted you, do you have anything to add to it?"

"No, he or she was obviously using Henge no Jutsu – since the villagers all claim to have seen us, not just people who look like us – but… things were a bit chaotic during the battle, it's hard to remember exactly what we saw or heard. I thought I saw a dark haired fisherman pulling me out of the water, but… now it almost feels like I must have simply dreamt it."

"U-um, sensei?" Hinata whispered. "W-what about what I saw?"

The Third cocked his head to the side. "What did you see, Hyuuga Hinata?"

Kurenai opened her mouth to point out that Hinata couldn't possibly be remembering accurately – especially since what she was remembering was impossible – but decided against it. Dismissing Hinata's observations would be foolish and would discourage Hinata from speaking up later when she had something that actually made sense to share.

"I-I saw…" Hinata's voice trailed off as she realized how foolish it would sound. "I _t-think_ I saw… someone who looked like Uzumaki Naruto… maybe." Her face flushed with embarrassment, and her down-turned eyes didn't see the encouraging smiles Kurenai, Iruka, and the Third tried to give her.

The Third Hokage was a wise man, he didn't dismiss something just because it seemed impossible. In this case, though, he was probably just being kind to the nervous Hyuuga heiress. Kurenai silently thanked him for it all the same. "Why do you think it was Naruto?"

"I… I could see his keirakurei. It doesn't change when a person uses Henge and… and it looked like Naruto-kun."

"But you didn't actually see his physical face," The Third clarified.

"N-no," Hinata admitted.

The Third continued to smile at her. "Thank you for adding this Hinata. I don't think you actually saw Naruto, he was sick, but definitely still in the village, however that doesn't mean that what you saw wasn't important. All information is important." He turned back to Kurenai, though his eyes shifted to Kiba momentarily as he asked, "How is Akamaru?"

A choked sound came from Kiba's throat, but he mostly managed to hold his composure. At that moment, a messenger slipped in through the double doors, carrying a report the Third had asked for earlier that day.

Kurenai took a deep breath and then said, "We still don't know what – if anything – can be done. Hinata did her best, but… well, we'll just have to wait and see. Kiba's sister, Inuzuka Hana, is examining him right now. According to her, the damage is… extensive, but it is possible that he'll survive. He's being operated on as we speak."

ooo

From where he was standing, Naruto could just see inside the room as the man spoke with the guards and then was allowed through. It was unusual for the assignment room to be closed off during this time of day, but not unheard of if a particularly sensitive – or lengthy – debriefing was taking place. Through the partially opened doors he spotted a grey jacket with black hairy-looking trim. Naruto only knew one person who wore that sort of jacket and the sound of Kurenai's voice that drifted out of the room was enough to confirm his suspicions.

"You can't go in," one of the chuunin told him as he began walking towards the door. Naruto ignored him, ducking and slipping past him as he pushed open the door. The two chuunin grabbed at him, but chakra instantly glued his feet to the floor and he managed a couple of steps farther into the room. The two men had obviously underestimated his strength because he hadn't even needed to augment his strength with chakra to keep from being stopped. Unfortunately, when they tried to pull back on him and were unable, they fell forward and all three of them went down with a loud crash.

Everyone in the room turned and stared at Naruto and the two chuunin, but he didn't care. Team Eight had returned safe and – mostly – sound. As he was entering the room, he'd also overheard enough of what Kurenai was saying to realize that Akamaru was still alive, at least for the moment.

The Third stared at Naruto for a couple of seconds while the blond got back to his feet and Iruka, who was quietly sitting next to the Hokage, put his face in his hands and shook his head as if trying to will away the reality of Naruto's actions.

Finally, everyone returned to what they'd been doing before Naruto's entrance. "Alright," the Third said in a gentle voice that veiled the fact that he was one of the strongest ninja in the entire world, "you five have had a long and difficult journey. Head home and rest up. Kurenai, please get me your report as soon as you are able, but there is no real rush. Your team will be on leave while you all recuperate." Then he looked at Kiba who – except for his insistence about the origin of the blood – had remained silent, standing a little off to the side and staring down at the ground. "Kiba-kun, our thoughts and prayers are with Akamaru."

Kiba nodded slowly, but didn't reply.

"You're dismissed."

Hinata, Shino, and Kurenai bowed – though Kurenai's bow was stiff and caused her to wince – and then the whole team turned and headed for the door. Naruto stared openly at them as the walked by, a big, stupid grin plastered on his face. Kiba, Shino and Kurenai didn't give him more than a cursory glance as they passed him, but Hinata's eyes widened and she gave him a small, shy smile in return before looking down and hurrying by.

Sakura, who had followed Kakashi and Sasuke into the room after Naruto made his entrance, didn't miss the look Hinata gave Naruto or the fact that he was happily smiling back. Her eyes flashed back and forth between the blond and Hinata before the Hyuuga heiress made her hasty exit and then a small knowing grin spread across her face.

As she and her teammates stepped forward and waited to receive their mission she leaned over and whispered, "I've got to hand it to you: you definitely aim high."

Naruto frowned in confusion, "Huh?"

Sakura winked, "Don't worry, you're secret's safe with me. Just be careful, I hear _some_ parents are more protective than others."

An even further perplexed expression appeared on Naruto's face. "Sakura-chan, I don—"

Iruka cleared his throat loudly and Naruto's head snapped around, his face instantly both innocent and looking as though he had been paying complete attention. It was a face Iruka seen almost every day during Naruto's time in the Academy and it brought a nostalgic smile to his face. "Are you ready to hear your assignment, Naruto? Or do you and Sakura have more important business to discuss?"

Naruto grinned sheepishly, "Ah, no sensei, we're done. Sakura was just telling me that she hoped we got an easy mission today so we could get done earlier."

"Naruto!" Sakura hissed, clamping a hand over his mouth. Turning to Iruka she quickly added, "That's not true, sensei! We'll take whatever mission you have for us. _Right,_ Naruto?"

Naruto pulled her hand away from his mouth. "If you have a cat we can catch or something, that would be perfect!"

Iruka rolled his eyes and shuffled through some papers. "It looks like your next duties will be either potato digging or…" he looked up in surprise, "…or tracking down the daimyo's wife's pet cat."

"We'll take the cat!" Naruto yelled, practically out the door already.

Kakashi watched as the door slammed shut behind him and then sighed, shaking his head. "I guess we'll be handling the lost pet mission."

The Third smiled good-naturedly and took a slow puff on his pipe as he handed the dossier to Kakashi and began to explain exactly what the mission entailed and describing what their objective would look like. When he was finished, Kakashi – hoping to avoid any sort of lecture on controlling his students – apologized for Naruto's behavior while Sakura eagerly nodded in agreement and added her own heartfelt apologies. Sasuke didn't apologize.

"I understand completely" the Third assured them as the apologies concluded, "but you should probably go out there and help him before he finds a way to screw up even a simple mission like this one. Dismissed."

As Team Seven filed out of the room and the next team entered to receive their mission, Iruka leaned over and whispered. "Thank you, Hokage-sama, for not being upset with Naruto. I think something's been bothering him lately, he just hasn't been himself this week. It was nice to see him acting more like Naruto… even if he was being a rude idiot."

"It's hard to find fault with enthusiasm, Iruka," the Third replied with a twinkle in his eye "Even I was young once."

Iruka checked the door to make sure that no other teams were coming in and then asked, "What do you think Hinata saw on the bridge?"

"It could have been anyone, maybe even Naruto."

"Naruto was here. Kakashi said he and his team checked up on him only two days before he returned to duty… he probably couldn't even have made it all the way out to the Wave Country and back again in that time!"

"There are many strange things in this world, Iruka, don't dismiss a possibility just because it is unlikely. In this case, it is more probable that she either imagined it because of the traumatic situation she found herself in, or else simply saw someone whose keirakurei happens to look similar to Naruto's, but it is not _entirely_ impossible that Naruto was there."

Before Iruka could ask anything more, another team entered and soon they were back to business as usual.

ooo

Sasuke, Kakashi, and Sakura made it outside just in time to see Naruto go leaping from balcony to balcony on a nearby building until he reached the roof and then began running towards a wooded area to the west.

"Hey dummy!" Sakura yelled after him, "Where do you think you're go— huh?"

Naruto was also pushing his way through a crowd just in front of them, his face eager and his eyes focused on the ground as though looking for something.

Sakura frowned. "How did he…"

The Naruto by the crowd was still in plan sight when another Naruto dashed out of a small alleyway, nearly tripped over a trashcan, and then began running towards the next side street.

"Three of him?" She shook her head. "Sometimes I hate those damn shadow clones of his."

"Count again," Sasuke answered, just a hint of amusement in his voice.

Two more Naruto's could be seen checking the trees the lined the plaza in front of the Tower. Another one was on top of a near by roof, one hand above his eyes to block the afternoon sunlight, looking back and forth. Still more could occasionally be spotted, thanks to their bright orange clothing, moving in and out of the crowded village streets.

"How many are there?" Sakura asked as she watched the search.

"A lot," Naruto's voice laughed from behind her as he put a hand on her shoulder.

Sakura jumped and let out a small cry of surprise and fright. "Idiot!" she growled once she realized who it was. In one smooth motion she spun on her heel and slammed her fist into the blond's face. Naruto vanished in a puff of smoke.

"Hey!" called another Naruto who had been walking by. "What the hell was that for?"

Sakura grabbed two handfuls of pink hair and gave them a hard tug as her face contorted comically. "Ugh, I've had nightmares that looked just like this!" she groaned.

Kakashi shrugged and reached for his book. "Well," he said as he flipped through the pages to find the right spot, "it doesn't exactly build the sort of teamwork these missions are normally supposed to encourage, but that's Naruto for you…" he paused, looking thoughtful for a moment and then added, "Of course, if you don't learn teamwork during your mission, we'll have to work on it _other_ ways."

Sasuke watched quietly as one clone wandered down the street lifting the lids off of trashcans and peering inside. "How can he make this many clones with actual bodies?" he wondered aloud, his mind once again on the question of Naruto's recent improvement. He looked up as about twenty more clones ran across a nearby rooftop, a few of them peeling off as the spotted unsearched areas. "No genin should have this much chakra to just throw around."

Kakashi's eye drifted from his page up to Sasuke, staring at the unaware Uchiha. "Naruto is a little different than most genin in that area, but don't worry, I'm sure you'll catch up to him someday."

Sasuke frowned. "I have to catch up?" He pondered the idea of Kakashi considering him to be behind Naruto in _any_ area for a moment, adding to his disconcertion over Naruto's growth in the last week, and then gave himself a little shake as he pushed the notion aside. "Come on Sakura. The dobe doesn't even know what he's looking for. We might as well go bale him out. Besides, if he gets lucky and finishes the mission without us, we'll never hear the end of it."

Sakura nodded and flashed him a happy smile. "Right."

The two of them hurried off down the street without so much as a glance at Kakashi leaving him standing in front of the Hokage Tower, calmly reading his book and occasionally snickering to himself. "They grow up so fast," he sighed as he turned the page, his eye widened slightly and another quiet, lecherous laugh escaped his lips.

ooo

Less than an hour later, Naruto and his clones marched into the plaza in front of the Hokage Tower like an invading army. Each of the thirty-plus Narutos carried a cat. Some were obviously strays, their fur matted, dirty, and/or missing, but one or two others looked like they actually did belong to someone.

"Where did you find that one?" Kakashi asked one of the blonds as he walked along the line, looking over the army's finds.

"He was on a balcony," the Naruto replied confidently lifting the white and gray cat a little higher so it could be more easily inspected.

"He has a collar."

"Yeah, so?"

"Do you think maybe you took him from his home?" Kakashi asked shaking his head.

The clone bit his lip. "Maybe," he admitted.

Kakashi sighed. "Take him back."

The clone huffed as he turned and hurried away, the rest of the Narutos snickering at his embarrassment.

One by one, Kakashi looked over the cats and one by one he turned them away. Some were strays, some were the wrong color, others the wrong type of cat, and one wasn't even really a cat. Kakashi tried not to smile as it became clear that Naruto's hast had backfired on him. In some ways, it was nice to see Naruto acting like Naruto again instead of being the strangely efficient ninja he'd become during the past week. It didn't change the fact that Kakashi was growing more and more concerned about the genin, but at least – for the moment – he could pretend that Naruto was just a normal, slightly dumb, hot headed genin and not…

He came to the next cat and looked down at it. Brown and ugly with a large, red ribbon tied in a bow on its ear. There was no denying that he was Tora, the daimyo's wife's cat that frequently escaped his overly affectionate mistress's clutches.

Kakashi started to ask how Naruto could possibly have known which cat they were looking for, but then he realized that there was no way Naruto _could_ have known that. He'd simply gotten extremely lucky that one of the multitude of cats he'd captured turned out to be the right one. Still, the odds of him finding the right cat, even with roughly four dozen clones scouring the village, were almost impossibly small. "Next time," he told the blond with as stern a look as he could manage in his bewildered state, "wait for the rest of us. We're a team – don't forget it."

The remaining Naruto's all smiled and nodded. "Does this mean we can start our training now?" one of them asked.

"Of course," Kakashi replied with a wicked grin that was hidden by his mask. "In fact, I have some special training planned for you three today. I think you'll like it."

"Do you want me to take this thing up to Iruka now or should I wait for Sasuke and Sakura-chan?"

"Why don't you just take it up yourself while another of you goes and finds your teammates. I'll meet you all at the usual training grounds."

If the blond noticed the foreboding tone in Kakashi's voice, he didn't comment on it. The Naruto holding the cat smiled and headed into the Hokage Tower to make his delivery while those who had failed to bring the right cat hurried to return their captives to where they'd found them and then to go find Sasuke. Kakashi watched them go, frowning under his mask and then once more took out his copy of _Icha Icha Paradise_ and began walking towards the training grounds.

As he walked, he found it difficult to concentrate on the erotic misadventures of Jio while he plotted his team's training session. He'd been considering something like this for a while now anyway and Naruto's actions on the mission gave him the perfect excuse to implement it. His team had obviously grown to the point where D-Rank missions weren't enough for them, but he couldn't let them have anything more difficult until he was certain of one thing.

They hadn't disappointed him back when they'd passed his first test, he hoped they wouldn't let him down this time either.

ooo

Kakashi's special training was less 'special' than it was 'time consuming' and 'annoying' – especially to an already impatient Naruto who just wanted to finish it so he could go check up on Kiba, Shino, and Hinata and find out how Akamaru was still alive and what his condition was. Most of what the jounin had them do were simple exercises that they had done during their Academy days, the only difference being that they had to do them for longer periods of time now or in tandem to "build teamwork." The only part of the special training that didn't come straight out of their Academy days was when he handed them a large, padded weighted ball, had them stand in a triangle, and throw it to one another while those receiving the ball had their eyes closed. After they mastered that useless exercise he made them all wear blindfolds and simply call for the ball and trust their teammates to throw it so they could catch it.

The early parts of the training were agonizing for all of them and Sakura let Naruto know on more than one occasion that she was holding him responsible for them having to go through it. Naruto tried not to complain too much, and really, he was so anxious to go see Team Eight that he could scarcely concentrate on what he was doing let alone gripe about it.

It was while they all were blindfolded that things started going south. The first time Naruto threw the ball to Sasuke the only sound that greeted his ears was an "oof" as he hit Sasuke in the chest instead of the hands. Sasuke's throw to Sakura apparently met with just as little success and her throw to Naruto actually hit him in the head – hopefully unintentionally, but then she _had_ been mad at him before they started. Soon almost every time the ball was thrown it was coming in faster or higher than it should have and the three of them were becoming bruised, angry messes.

What the genin couldn't see was that initially Kakashi had been standing near their circle and helping them hurt each other. Naruto's first throw had been right on target, as had Sasuke's, while Sakura's had been a little high, but within tolerance – until Kakashi 'helped' them fail the way he wanted them to. After the second round of throws, he hadn't had to alter the flights of any balls since the three were so frustrated with each other that they were simply getting revenge for perceived past injuries. In fact, he'd actually had to make sure that the three didn't hurt each other _too_ badly more than once.

After three hours of training, none of the genin wanted to even look at each other anymore. Naruto wasn't sure if this was what Kakashi had been shooting for or not – having never gone through a training session like it – but in his mind the team's comradery seemed to have suffered rather than been strengthened during those three hours. _He _certainly didn't want to have anything to do with his teammates and he was a mature adult… sort of.

Not that he cared much at the moment. His teammates had gotten over all sorts of bad training sessions the first time around, they could do so again. All he cared about for the moment was finding Team Eight, hearing how Akamaru was doing, and getting back to his long delayed plan of helping Hinata.

ooo

Over an hour later, Naruto was fuming over how much trouble he was having getting in touch with Team Eight. He'd first gone to the animal hospital near the area of the village most members of the Inuzuka clan called home, only to be turned away at the door. He wasn't the owner or partner of an animal staying there and Kiba didn't answer a page, so he had no right to go beyond the lobby. He wasn't sure if this was because of who he was – and what was sealed inside of him – or was simply hospital policy, but it pissed him off royally.

They'd never had a problem letting him in when he was Hokage… or _temporary_ Hokage, anyway.

_'Bastards,'_ he grumbled as he stormed away. He hated that building anyway. Most of the animals didn't know how to quietly deal with their injuries, so the sounds of groaning and growling always seemed to echo down the hallways. Also, with a few _intelligent_ exceptions, animals didn't exactly get along all that well with him. A lot of his contact with animals during missions ended with him being scratched, kicked, and/or bitten… the sort of thing that didn't really endear their kind to him.

His remaining options were Shino or Hinata, assuming they weren't in the animal hospital with Kiba, and neither of them could be found in any of the usual places they'd frequented as adults. The thought of trying to find either of them at their homes was not a pleasant one. The Aburame clan – with their dark sunglasses, calm, almost-emotionless voices, and bugs that could do everything from sucking all of the chakra out of a man to stripping the meat from his bones – always left him stepping on eggshells around them, even when he was the strongest ninja in the village. Not that he was ever really quiet or not _mostly_ himself around them, but he always got the distinct impression that he was offending them even when he hadn't – to his knowledge – said or done anything offensive. The ones he got to know were nice enough, once you were used to the way they acted, but there was a difference between knowing they were nice people and feeling comfortable around them.

Shino was the only one he'd ever really felt comfortable around and that had taken many years.

Plus, he wasn't completely sure Shino even really knew who he was at this point since they almost never spoke to each other at the Academy. Aside from having seen Naruto's pranks and the one time Naruto tried to talk to Hinata before Team Eight left on their mission, Shino might not know him from Maito Gai.

Going to the Hyuuga homestead wouldn't be much better, of course. Naruto had never cared for the clan, except for Neji, Hinata and very few others, and at the moment he couldn't even throw the fact that he was the Hokage in their faces – probably the only reason he'd ever been allowed through their gates. Knowing how some of them were treating Hinata and what the elders would do to her once it was time for her to take over as leader of the clan, he wasn't sure he'd be able to keep from decking anyone he recognized.

So the dilemma was should he go somewhere he would feel uncomfortable or somewhere he was going to be angry… assuming he was actually allowed to speak with anyone living in either place.

In the end, he flipped a coin. Heads for Hyuuga, tails for Aburame.

It came up heads.

He gave it another flip, just to be sure.

Heads again.

He considered going for best three out of five, but decided the Gods of Chance had spoken. There was no point in tempting them to strike him with lightening or anything. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing, even this far back Hinata was still one of the nicest people he knew. She certainly wouldn't turn him away without telling him at least a little about the mission to the Wave Country – like everything that had happened after he'd left them unconscious on the bridge. Shino, on the other hand, might feel that there was no reason to share that information with a nosey genin he barely knew or worse, he might start questioning (in his annoyingly logical way) why Naruto would be interested or catch some slip of the tongue that gave away that Naruto knew more than he should. Hinata was just as smart as her teammate, but she tended to accept what people said and did at face value.

Five minutes later, Naruto was kneeling on a roof and staring at the cluster of buildings that stood out more than any other in the village. The Hyuuga clan's property was surrounded by a wall that stood just a little more than two meters tall – not enough to keep out any ninja actually worthy of the name, but it did provide the clan with some privacy. Beyond the walls were beautiful gardens with small paths winding through them. There were, if Naruto remembered correctly, at least two little streams running through the gardens and the paths often crossed them with small, elegant bridges. The gardens were filled with flowers and sakura trees and during the spring and summer the entire area was a sea of color and pleasant fragrances.

The houses were all of a very different style of architecture from the mishmash of styles that made up the rest of the village. Everything on the Hyuuga's property seemed completely in harmony both with itself and its surroundings. The roofs of the buildings were all made with the same dark red shingles and all had the same slope and curve to them. Most of the houses were surrounded by elegant patios and porches and many were built like a ring, with a private garden or lawn in the middle.

Naruto remembered once asking Hinata about that. She had explained that the designs and style were examples of some sort of ancient architecture. She'd given it a name, but he'd long since forgotten what it was… things like that weren't important enough to remember.

The Hyuuga liked their houses built from ancient tradition, sort of like they preferred to live their lives by ancient tradition. The houses were nice, but the rest of it had caused more than one headache for him in the past… future.

As he silently traced the path that led from the front gate to Hinata's house with his eyes, he felt his insides do a little flip-flop. It wasn't hard for him to guess why he was having that reaction. He really hated this place.

It was strange that he had such a negative feeling towards a place where a couple of his good friends (or at least people who would eventually be his good friends) lived, even more so because some of his more peaceful memories in life had involved walking through those gardens with Hinata or Neji or both. Still, for all its outward beauty and peacefulness, something was rotting inside that clan.

In his original life, he'd promised Neji and Hinata that he would change their clan. He'd never been able to keep that promise the way he meant to, but this time he would do it perfectly.

And it would start with turning Hinata into the sort of heir the clan elders couldn't help but accept or at least into one that they couldn't afford to refuse…

ooo

Hinata wanted to throw up. It was hard to say if this was because she wanted an excuse _not_ to go home or because of the news they'd gotten from Kiba's sister, Hana, about Akamaru or because she actually was ill, but not understanding the feeling's origin did not make it any less powerful.

It wasn't late yet so dinner would probably be waiting for her when she got home. She hoped that she would be allowed to skip it and simply go take a long, relaxing bath and then retire to her room for the night. She wasn't sure that she could face her father after her failures on the mission. He was certain to ask what happened and would even press her for details when she described the parts of the story were she was most involved.

How would he react when she told him that she'd nearly been killed? Or that her survival in the last battle had nothing to do with her own skill, but with the kindness of her enemy? Or that she had done the least of all of her teammates? Or that her whole team had been saved by some sort of mysterious stranger who – maybe – looked a lot like Uzumaki Naruto or was – as Inari seemed convinced – the ghost of a fisherman? And those were just the events of that last day of fighting, before that she would have to explain her inability to really help her teammates against those first two men that had ambushed them, her failures in the initial battle against Zabuza that had left Kurenai badly wounded, and her trusting of the boy in the woods – going so far as to help him gather medicine – who later turned out to be an enemy.

Once again, she was coming back from a mission feeling that she had failed herself, her teammates, her mentor, and her clan. Her father would surely be able to smell the shame on her the moment she stepped through the door.

She tried to push those thoughts away, but they were only replaced by the image of poor Akamaru lying on the small bed in the hospital, a large bandage over his left eye, several scrolls inscribed with seals running over his body, and an electrocardiogram monitoring his fluctuating vital signs. That image quickly led to the memory of Kiba's face as they walked into Akamaru's room and his sister's eyes met his.

Hana still didn't know if Akamaru would survive or not, but Hinata knew Kiba was expecting the worst. She'd overheard Hana tell Kurenai that Akamaru was slowly responding to the treatment and that there was a better than fifty percent chance that he would live since he had already survived this long, but that his eye could not be saved.

Hinata wondered if Kiba blamed himself for Akamaru's injury. She knew she did. She was the medic-nin – however inexperienced and unskilled – it was her job to heal any teammate injured on a mission or at least to treat their wounds until they reached a safe place with more skilled physicians. If she was a better ninja she might have been able to heal Akamaru's eye enough that someone of Inuzuka Hana's skill could have saved it… of course, if she was a better ninja, perhaps she could have just kept Akamaru from being injured in the first place instead of just standing there and watching.

After they'd decided that they would have to return home for medical treatment – and after Tazuna had assured them that with Gato gone, the threat to his life was most likely over – Kurenai had asked her if she thought Akamaru was strong enough to be moved. Hinata hadn't thought that Akamaru's life was in danger… and she might have been wrong. Perhaps moving him had only made his injuries worse – despite Hana's insistence that it hadn't – maybe they should have sent a request for trained veterinary-nins. She should have suggested it. She should have known.

Hinata nervously picked at her fingers inside the long sleeves of her coat as her thoughts slowly spiraled ever downward. There were so many things she should have done better on that mission, she was amazed Kurenai hadn't even yelled at her about any of them. She knew the members of her clan would immediately…

"Look, you haven't even gone in there to ask if she wants to see me, so how could you know what she wants?" an oh-so-familiar voice demanded. Hinata looked up in surprise to find Naruto and a branch family member, Hyuuga Masatami, glaring at each other.

"_No one_ wants to see you," Masatami replied with an angry scowl, "especially not someone of Hinata-sama's standing."

The muscles in Naruto's right arm tensed and for a second Hinata thought he might actually take a swing at the older man, but then he let out a slow breath, grumbled something under his breath, and turned…

…right towards her.

"Hinata-chan!" he gasped, staring at her and then turned angrily back towards the branch family member. "You said she didn't want to see me! She wasn't even in there, bastard!"

Masatami didn't look embarrassed at apparently having been caught in a lie, but he bristled at the accusation. "I never said she was inside, only that neither she nor any other member of the Hyuuga clan wanted to see you."

"E-excuse me… Masatami-san," Hinata said so quietly that neither of the two young men heard her and she had to repeat herself before they really did come to blows. "E-excuse me, M-Masatami-san," she said a little louder this time, stopping the escalating argument for the moment, "I-I'm sorry, but there is a m-misunderstanding… I-I do not mind seeing Naruto-kun."

Masatami stared at her for so long she began to wonder if perhaps she still hadn't been loud enough, but then he turned away in a huff and stepped back to the gate. "You're father would not be pleased," he grumbled, "but, if you wish, I will refrain from mentioning this… incident to anyone."

Hinata smiled and bowed her head lower than the elders would consider appropriate for the family heiress to give to a branch member. "T-thank you, but… you do not need to cover anything up for me. Naruto-kun is a…" her voice trailed off as she suddenly realized that she had no idea what Naruto was to her, or at least no idea what Naruto considered himself to be. It would be presumptuous – not to mention rude – of her to call him a friend when – so far as he knew – he was, technically, little more than an acquaintance despite her admiration of him… though there was that strange conversation the day they got their team assignments.

"Friend," Naruto finished her sentence for her, which was a little impolite and Masatami's scowl deepened at it, but the fact that Naruto was smiling at her when he said it – not to mention _what_ it he'd said while smiling – pushed any unintended social faux pas out of Hinata's mind.

"Y-yes, a friend," she nodded, swallowing hard and praying that the heat she felt radiating from her cheeks was not as visible as she suspected it was.

Masatami bowed to her, still glaring at Naruto and returned to his post, leaving the two genin more or less alone in front of the gate to the Hyuuga compound.

Hinata looked down at the ground, watching her sandaled feet slowly push a small pile of dirt around, and waited for Naruto to start talking. After a full minute she looked up, gasped, and then looked down again. Naruto was staring very intently at her!

"W-why did you want to… to see me, N-Naruto-kun?" she managed at last, hoping – and simultaneously fearing – that the sooner he started talking, the quicker he'd be done. At least when he was done she wouldn't have to feel the embarrassed heat radiating from her cheeks anymore.

"Hinata-chan," he practically laughed, "you're a sight for sore eyes!"

She had no idea what that meant, but it sounded good – almost like he was happy to see her. She couldn't remember him ever having acted like that towards her… except that afternoon on the training grounds, right after she and her team had gotten out of their first meeting with Kurenai. Remembering his strange antics that day reminded her of the way that meeting had ended – with him laughing and her crying – which in turn drew her attention to her treatment of him right before she'd left to go to the Wave Country. It seemed like something that had happened years and years ago, back when she was a naive little girl, but in reality it had only been about two weeks ago.

"N-Naruto-kun," she whispered, "I am so… sorry for the way I treated you w-when last we spoke. It was… dishonorable of me to be so rude."

Naruto frowned, looking perplexed. "Huh?"

"You asked if I would like to…" her voice trailed off. He'd asked if she would like to train or 'hang out' – the latter was nearly the same as being asked out on a date, at least according to a couple of girls she'd overheard while still in the Academy. Certainly Naruto hadn't meant it like _that_, but then she had no idea _how_ he'd meant it. "I was r-rude to you. You thought I was angry with you… please, forgive me!"

She quickly bowed at the waist, lower than was appropriate considering that he was of a lower station than herself, but she didn't care. She had acted horribly to one of the people she admired most in all the world and it had almost been her last chance to talk to him. She'd always dreamed of telling him how she felt, she would have regretted it for all of eternity if she'd died with him thinking she was mad at him… even if he was right.

Naruto was quiet for a moment, but then said, "Oh, that," as realization dawned on him. "Don't worry about it, Hinata-chan, it was my fault… or at least, I think it was probably my fault. It usually is when Sakura-chan gets mad at me."

Hinata opened her mouth to protest that the whole thing was in fact _her_ fault, but he waved his hands before she could speak.

"Look, I'll forgive you for whatever you think you did and you forgive me for whatever it was that I probably did first and we'll call it even, okay?"

She bit her lip, still not sure that it was fair for him to take the blame, but also not willing to be so rude as to continue to try to take it back from him. She'd seen meetings between diplomats and dignitaries where all they did was asked each other for forgiveness for the same thing, neither willing to concede that the fault lay with the other because of some sort of strange humility one-upmanship. Naruto probably wasn't doing that, it just wasn't his style. Chances were he was just bored of the conversation and wanting to talk about something else. "Okay," she replied with a small smile.

He started to say something and then stopped, glancing suspiciously at the gate where Masatami would be standing guard. "Are you hungry?" he asked.

Hinata wasn't, not even remotely. She just wanted to go home and take a bath and then go to sleep. "A little," she lied because she didn't want the conversation to end so she would have no choice but to go home and recount her failures to her father.

"You want to go get some ramen," he asked with a large grin.

Ramen sounded horrible. "I-If you would like to, that sounds nice," she was blushing now and trying to surreptitiously pinch herself through her pants. Naruto didn't just want to talk to her or hang out, he was asking her out on a _date_… or at least it sounded that way. Perhaps that wasn't really how he meant it, but if it wasn't, why did he say it like that?

"Awesome," he beamed back at her, "while we walk to Ichiraku's you can tell me all about your mission."

Hinata's heart, which had been soaring up into the stratosphere, came crashing down again. Of course, how stupid of her to think that he saw her that way, he barely knew her and the last time they'd talked she was rude to him. Still, even if he wasn't asking her out in the same way that she'd hoped, he was treating her as a friend – he'd even called himself her friend – and that was more than she'd ever dared to expect.

She didn't want to talk about the mission with Naruto anymore than with her father. Both were people she feared disappointing, but at least Naruto would be unaware of her history of disappointing failures, so perhaps it wouldn't be so bad to talk with him.

As they walked, Naruto listened politely while she recounted the mission to him only interrupting occasionally to ask a question about some detail of a fight or to give a little whoop during the "exciting" parts. Though it might have only been her imagination, he didn't seem truly focused on the story until she reached their first battle with Zabuza.

They reached the ramen bar just as she was getting to explaining that Inari had convinced himself that his dead father had saved him from two men, Waraji and Zori, that had attack his house and tried to kidnap his mother and that the little boy had vowed to live up to his father's legacy so that his spirit would never again need to rescue him. By the time their food was set in front of them, she was describing what she could remember of the fight with Haku. Hinata offered to stop talking at that point so they could eat – and so she could recover from having talked more than she could ever remember doing in such a short period of time (and in front of Naruto of all things!) – but Naruto asked her to keep going, unless she was hungry, of course. She was actually beginning to feel hungry, though ramen didn't sound especially appetizing at the moment, but instead of telling him that she smiled politely and continued with the story – leaving out the part where she thought she saw him fighting Zabuza and presumably saving them all since she was becoming more and more convinced that it was nothing more than a foolish fantasy that she'd dreamed up while unconscious… even if that left the question of how they'd survived unanswered.

She told him about waking up on the bridge, with Inari and Tazuna kneeling next to her, the former crying, the latter looking like he might want to, and how shortly after she had managed to sit up, Kiba and Shino had coughed and weakly pushed themselves into sitting positions. Not long after, Kurenai had been found on a dock that extended out from the village a short distance from the bridge, unconscious but not in any danger. She was tired and the wound in her side had partially opened up, but she was probably in the best shape out of the rest of the team. At first everyone had thought that Akamaru was the only casualty, but even he was still alive, though his injury was severe. The needle had pierced his eye and cracked the skull behind it, but had thankfully gone no farther.

After carefully carrying the little puppy back to Tazuna's house, Hinata had gathered some of the herbs she and the boy, Haku, had picked. While she tended to Akamaru, she heard retellings of the stories that Kurenai and Shino had been told by the villagers about what they found on the bridge. Apparently her team, or at least a group of people that looked like her team, had killed Gato and stared down an army of his men when they threatened to attack the village. The villagers were convinced that Team Eight had actually been so intent on saving them that even after they'd been knocked unconscious they still continued fighting, though that was an even less likely explanation that her fantasy about Naruto saving her. Inari had confided in her that he thought maybe his father's spirit had something to do with it, though he wasn't fully convinced of this.

"Kiba-kun says that the blood we found came from Zabuza and that another puddle might have been where Haku d-died or was injured," she said as her story wound down. "I hope that is not the case. He was our enemy, but he didn't try to kill us… Akamaru's injury was p-probably just as accident… Haku was… kind."

Naruto closed his eyes and sighed, "Yeah. He sounds nice." For a moment, both were quiet, and then Naruto asked, "So, what did they name the bridge?"

Hinata's face flushed and she looked down at her untouched bowl. "I-Inari-kun said that Tazuna-san decided to name it… after me and Inari's father, Kaiza… because he thought that I h-helped change Inari's heart somehow… so Inari could change the hearts of the rest of the village and because Inari-kun is convinced that his father is watching over them even after his death." She could feel Naruto's gaze on her and wished that she could simply sink down through the floor. "It was… silly of Tazuna-san to think such things… I-I didn't do anything to help anyone! I just got in the way throughout the whole mission."

She waited for him to laugh, but he didn't. When she finally managed to look at him out of the corner of her eye she found him frowning contemplatively.

"The Great Kaiza and Hinata Bridge, huh?" he said with a little nod, ignoring her comments about her lack of contribution to the missions success. Then he glanced at her and smiled, "Sounds like a good name for a bridge if you ask me."

"How did you know the bridge's name?" Hinata asked in surprise.

Naruto rocked back in his seat and bit the inside of his cheek, his eyes shifting from side to side in a way that normally meant the person was trying to come up with a response to a question they couldn't – or didn't want to – answer. "Uh… was that _really_ what it was?" he asked with a nervous chuckle. "I was just, uh… making something up. I mean, you said it was named after you and that guy, Kaiza, right? And Tazuna sounds like… I mean, I just figured he'd have some grand name for his bridge. I didn't _really_ think that would be the actually name.'"

Hinata smiled. "T-Tazuna-san is a… a bit of a braggart," she conceded.

"Yeah," Naruto's smile looked strangely relieved, though Hinata had no idea why. He quickly snatched up his chopsticks and shoved an overly large clump of noodles into his mouth, nearly choking as he did so. He swallowed and grimaced, "Ugh, cold ramen is the worst," he muttered.

Hinata's smile grew a little larger and she even had to cover her desire to giggle by pretending to cough. Naruto pushed his bowl away and asked her to finish the story. The only thing left was to tell him about sending the carrier bird back to the village to explain what had happened that they were returning right away and of Hana's examination of Akamaru.

Naruto seemed upset – though didn't actually say anything unusual, instead giving the typical "wow, that's so sad, I hope he's okay" comment that people always used after hearing bad news that didn't really affect them – at the fact that Akamaru had lost his eye and was still potentially in danger of dying, but he brightened considerably when she related to him Hana's opinion that Akamaru stood a good chance of living.

After talking briefly about how Kiba was taking Akamaru's injury, the conversation finally drifted into silence. Hinata was certain she'd never spoken so much in such a short period of time before and she felt almost sorry that she'd done all of the talking during the past hour, but Naruto didn't seem to mind, if anything, he'd encouraged it with his questions. It was a strange feeling to speak with someone for so long and not have them seem tired of the conversation, but Naruto made no move to excuse himself or rush her story so she would stop talking.

"Do you think your father will be impressed?" he asked after a few minutes of playing with his chopsticks.

Hinata looked down and frowned, unsure of how to answer. For one thing, understanding the real answer to the question required at least some knowledge of her relationship with her father, not to mention the Hyuuga clan's expectations of her. For another, she didn't want to tell him the truth and have to admit that her father wasn't normally proud of her – not to Naruto who had been an orphan for as long as he could remember and wouldn't be able to understand the complicated dynamics of a father-daughter relationship. "M-maybe," she replied tentatively, "though I didn't r-really do much."

Naruto scratched his head with one of the chopsticks. "I don't know, you took down two bad guys, kept everyone alive when Zabuza was after you at the lake, saved Kurenai-sensei's life, probably saved Akamaru's life, and got a bridge named after you… what's not to be proud of?"

The conversation had taken an uncomfortable turn for Hinata and she suddenly found herself wishing it would come to an end. Talking to Naruto like this was something she'd dreamed of and fantasized about almost from the first day she met him, when he'd gotten into trouble for comically mimicking one of their chuunin instructors while her back was turned. Naruto's impression had been spot on – he'd been in at the Academy longer than the rest of their class and apparently he'd observed the kunoichi enough to get her mannerisms down – and the class had giggled each time he did it and tried to swallow their snickers when the instructor turned back around (Naruto had been quick enough to sit innocently back in his seat three times before finally getting caught). He was funny, outgoing, and loved – later she learned that 'craved' was a better word for it – being the center of attention, everything she was not. She wanted to be just like him, but didn't have the nerve to try.

"You know what your problem is, Hinata-chan?" Naruto asked when she didn't answer. She could think of several problems that she'd had pointed out to her by helpful family members over the years, but this was certainly a rhetorical question. "You don't like yourself very much."

Hinata sucked in a sharp breath. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Naruto lowering his own head to try to get a better look at her face that was hidden by her hair, but she turned away from him. No one had ever said that to her. So far as she knew, she was the only one who had ever even noticed how she felt about herself, though others might just have not bothered pointing it out.

Without thinking about it, she brought her hands up from her lap and brushed her lower lip, squeezing it softly, feeling the calming tingles run through her body.

"I-I don't know what you are… t-talking about, Naruto-kun," she whispered.

Naruto stopped trying to catch her eye and instead placed a hand on her back that warmed her whole body even through her thick jacket. "Yes, you do," he said in the sort of kind, gentle voice that she'd always imagined a favorite uncle or perhaps a kind older brother would have used when talking to a child. "I understand why you feel that way, but there's no reason to. You're an amazing person Hinata-chan, more amazing than you'll probably ever know."

For what seemed to be the thousandth time since she ran into him outside of the Hyuuga gates, Hinata felt her cheeks flush. It seemed like half of the words coming out of his mouth were far more familiar than was proper… the sort of things that only a very close friend should say. Then he would talk to her in the way that he normally talked to everyone. She just couldn't get a handle on what he was doing and her brain was having trouble keeping up with the surge and ebb of emotion.

Naruto didn't give any sign that he'd noticed the heat radiating from her cheeks. Instead he leaned a little closer and said, "If you want, I could help you get stronger."

Hinata's head snapped up in surprise. Unfortunately, Naruto hadn't been ready for her reaction and the side of her head slammed into his nose.

For a long moment, all Hinata could do was stare in horror as Naruto flexed his face and squeezed his nose while wiping tears of pain from his eyes. He'd practically asked her to name the thing she wanted most in all the world and then gave it to her… and she had nearly broken his nose. There was no way he would want to train with her now, not after seeing how clumsy she was. She'd ruined her only chance.

"Na…Na-Naruto-kun… I-I-I am s-so s-sorry!" she stammered. She reached out to… help him, though just how she was going to do that was beyond her, but he waved it off and miraculously smiled at her.

"It's no big deal," he chuckled. "Sakura-chan hits way harder that."

"N-no, it w-was… I just was sur…surprised… that you would…"

Naruto put a hand on her shoulder, still grinning. "Do you want to get stronger, Hinata-chan?"

Hinata nodded dumbly.

"Why? For your father, your clan, or for yourself?"

Hinata wasn't sure what answer he was looking for, or if he would take the offer from the table if she answered incorrectly, but the way he was looking at her made it difficult to just try to give the answer she hoped he wanted. So she gave him the truth. "A-all three."

Naruto sighed, but didn't stop smiling. "Alright. Is tomorrow morning okay? I have missions in the afternoon, but – so far –" something about the way he said 'so far' that last part made Hinata think he was disappointed that he had to add that part, "my mornings and evenings are free if you want to train with me."

Hinata didn't trust her voice, so she just nodded – hoping that she didn't appear to desperately eager.

Naruto pulled a large frog wallet from his pocket and paid for their two nearly-untouched bowls of ramen. With one last smile at her and a little pat on her shoulder he said, "I'll meet you outside your place tomorrow at five, make sure you gets some rest tonight." He took about four steps, but then stopped and looked back at her. "You did good on your mission, Hinata-chan. Tazuna wouldn't have named the bridge after you if all you did was sit around looking pretty. You don't have anything to be ashamed of; don't let _anyone_ tell you differently, got it?"

He didn't wait to see if she would nod or not – she didn't – before he continued on his way. Of the few conversations Hinata had actually had with Naruto, this was probably the most normal and yet it still wasn't the sort of conversation that she'd expected to have with him. Despite watching him for several years, usually without him even knowing it, she still apparently hadn't seen the real Naruto.

She stood and started heading for home, wondering what awaited her there. If her discussion with her father went poorly, she felt it wouldn't be so bad this one time. Spending time with Naruto had given her a little bit of courage and the fact that he had invited her to train with him the following day would take the edge off any looks of disappointment she might receive from her family.

Just this once.

o

o

A/N: Well, I'm even less confident about this chapter than I was with the previous one. Then again, the last chapter got a full 15 more reviews than any chapter before it, so maybe I just don't know what works and what doesn't… or maybe I just got lucky with the last one, who knows? Sorry this chapter was so long – with no real action – it was supposed to be more like 8-9K instead of the nearly 13K that it reached. Probably I should have really cut down Hinata's retelling of the end of the mission since it was already pretty much known, but in the interest of getting it up on schedule, I'm holding off on that change for the moment. The rest of the added length happened because of changes to previous chapters, but I think after this chapter those changes won't be so disruptive to what I've already written/planned out. Just so you know, there _is_ more action on the horizon (hard to believe, I know), we just have to get past some of this other stuff before we can get there and after that I can – FINALLY – start dealing with the Chuunin Exam.

Akamaru's survival, by the way, is mostly because I couldn't think of what to do with Kiba if I killed the poor puppy off. I think it would take several chapters to deal with the fallout from such a loss (he'd probably quit as a ninja, at least for a while, which would mess up Team Eight, then he might have to get a new partner, whom I'd have to name…), it just didn't seem worth it. Akamaru getting hurt causes some issues, but not so many that they need a lot of work to sort out.

Anyway, Please review and let me know what you thought.

PS: Any of you who are keeping up with the manga happen to notice that I was – sort of – right in my prediction about Orochimaru from way back in the beginning of the story? Of course, I was fairly vague (since I wanted to leave an outside chance of being right no matter what happened between Sasuke and him), but still… not too shabby a job gazing into the future, if I do say so myself!

Keirakurei – chakra coil system… not to be confused with Tenketsu, which are the holes from which chakra is released from the body.

Jio – I gave a name to the poor character in _Icha Icha Paradise_ who apparently spends a lot of his time getting rejected and probably being put in uncomfortable situations. Jio is the name of the main character from 666 Satan, the manga written by Seishi Kishimoto (the younger twin brother of Mashashi, for those who didn't know). I haven't read much of that series yet, but the first couple of chapters are interesting.

Hyuuga Masatami – anyone who's watched Full Metal Panic Fumoffu might have recognized this one. He was a rich, sickly kid who invites Kaname up to his mansion, leaving Sousuke thinking that she's been kidnapped… hilarity ensues… I picked the name because he happens to have the surname Hyuuga, that's all.


	15. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

o

As he stood on his balcony, having just woken from another fitful nights sleep, the early morning air chilled Sasuke's bare chest and he couldn't resist the instinct to shiver. The moon hung low over the village, in another hour or so it would slip beneath the trees, but for the moment it lit up his clan's empty homes, casting long shadows along the ground. From his balcony it was easy to picture the shadows as dark blood, the way he'd seen it on _that_ night. It almost wouldn't have surprised him if he'd seen his brother slip from one of the empty buildings and head into another to continue his inhuman slaughter of their friends and family members.

"I'll get stronger, no matter what it takes," he promised the shadows and then headed back inside and quickly changed. As he pulled his dark blue shirt over his head he thought back to one of their earlier missions when Naruto had been attacked by the bull. He'd used a jutsu that Sasuke had never seen before and claimed that "a friend" had taught it to him. While the idea of a friend teaching Naruto anything didn't make sense (Naruto didn't really have any friends other than Sakura and _she_ obviously hadn't taught it to him), certainly he'd gotten it from somewhere just like he'd found someone or something somewhere that was helping him grow stronger.

With his promise to get stronger no matter what still fresh in his mind, Sasuke set off for Naruto's apartment. He couldn't ask for help in front of Sakura or Kakashi. He didn't even want to ask in front of Naruto, but if Naruto wasn't there this morning, Sasuke might not have a choice anymore. As much as his pride demanded he grow stronger on his own, being seen as second to Naruto – and Kakashi's comment that he had to _catch up_ to Naruto the previous day proved that he was seen that way – was simply intolerable. Naruto had offered to teach him the earth jutsu he'd used on the bull and he'd tried to point out a mistake while they worked on the taijutsu training and he'd even asked if Sasuke would like to train with him. Perhaps if Sasuke could have to swallow his pride and accept the offered assistance it wouldn't be so bad.

On one hand, it wasn't the way Itachi had done it and Sasuke didn't like the idea of being second to his brother in anything, but on the other, Itachi was also a murdering bastard, so it wasn't necessarily unacceptable to take a different path.

Once again, it didn't take long for him to reach Naruto's apartment and with the even earlier hour there was even less of a chance of being spotted. Just like the previous morning, there were no lights coming from the window leading to the tiny balcony that was little more than a wide wooden plank with some metal railing around it, so Naruto might already be gone again. Sasuke watched the apartment for over thirty-minutes, debating how to handle this new set back, but before he reached a satisfactory answer, Naruto slipped through his window, easily leapt the distance between his balcony, and then nearest roof top and then continued on through the village.

Sasuke almost did a little dance, but his joy was short lived when he realized that Naruto was already out of sight, having left almost no clue as to where he might be heading. All he had to go on was the general direction Naruto had been heading just before he disappeared. There were several training areas that way, but one in particular seemed the most likely spot Naruto would go.

A short while later he was walking through the training grounds where he, Sakura, and Naruto had officially become genin. The ground was damp with dew and soft wisps of mist rose from it as the air slowly warmed with the coming of morning. Naruto wasn't there, which meant Sasuke had misjudged him and that he could be at any one of the dozens of training grounds littered throughout and around the village. It would take all day to search them all – assuming Naruto had even gone to one of them. He would have to wait and swallow his pride and ask Naruto for help after Kakashi dismissed them in the afternoon. It was unfortunate, because it would be a far more public humiliation that Sasuke wanted, but it couldn't be helped. If Naruto really was ahead of him and really was willing to offer up the secret of his growth, Sasuke could suffer any humiliation to set things back to the way they were supposed to be.

His dark eyes scanned the area one more time, as if Naruto might have simply been hiding behind one of the wooden posts or…

Sasuke's gaze fell upon the dark teal cenotaph with the tombstone-like markers in front of it. Heroes of the village got their names carved on it, dead heroes – those who died on missions or in some sort of service to the village. The stone drew him in and soon he he'd lost track of how long he'd been staring at it.

His parents' names weren't on there. In fact, there were very few Uchiha names carved on the memorial. Some might consider that a good thing, but Sasuke knew the truth. It wasn't because there were so few Uchiha heroes that their names weren't on the stone, but because so many Uchiha heroes had been slaughtered in their beds by a traitor. Itachi had not only denied them their right to live, he'd denied them the right to die with honor. The Uchiha clan, once so proud, was no longer known for their skills or genius or strength, but for their pitiful deaths. They were the clan that was slaughtered… all but one.

Sasuke's darkening thoughts were interrupted by the sound of voices approaching. He wouldn't have cared if someone were to find him out here training, but he did not want to be found staring at the stone and… he reached up and wiped at his eyes, having not realized until that moment that tears were forming there… crying. His tears were for him and him alone, no one else needed to know about them, certainly Itachi never would. He nimbly leapt into a nearby tree and crouched down into the foliage as two people rounded the corner. Sasuke couldn't help but smile at what he saw below. Perhaps the gods, or fate, were looking out for him this morning.

"Hinata-chan, you really didn't have to make us breakfast," Naruto said with a grin as he tossed the remains of a rice ball into the air and caught it in his mouth. "Bahut, A'm shoo gla' you did," he added as he chewed and then swallowed.

"I thought… it was the l-least I could do… since you offered to help me, Naruto-kun," Hyuuga Hinata stammered, her head down and her purple hair hanging in her face.

Sasuke's brow knit with confusion. What was she doing here? He'd seen her a few times at the Academy, she was one of the few girls who didn't annoy him constantly by chasing after him and trying to talk to him every free moment, but that was about the only point in her favor as far as he was concerned. She was quiet to the point of being invisible and never seemed to do all that well at anything. Her test scores were middle of the road, she was excused from participating in taijutsu training, and was average at best during ninjutsu and target practice.

Basically, she was a non-entity.

Apparently Naruto didn't think so, though that hardly said much. Then again, she _was_ a Hyuuga and they were almost as well known for their genius as they were for their peculiar eyes. Maybe she was Naruto's secret? The Hyuuga clan was rather secretive; perhaps they had some sort of technique that could rapidly improve even the poorest of ninja and Naruto was only using Hinata to get it. That sounded far more underhanded than Sasuke would have thought Naruto capable of, not to mention more intelligent, but then Naruto had done a lot lately that Sasuke wouldn't have thought him capable of, what was one more thing?

"Alright, what should we do first?" Naruto asked cheerfully as he began to stretch on the still-damp grass. Hinata watched him stretch, looking like she was trying to become as small as possible. Her head was still slightly bowed, her hands clasped near her chin – one finger partially extended and occasionally brushing her lower lip – and her arms were pulled in tight to the rest of her body, even her feet and legs were together.

"Um, I'm sorry, I don't know… Naruto-kun. W-what do you want to do first?"

Naruto finished stretching and looked thoughtful. "Has Kurenai-sensei given you anything to work on that you're struggling with?" he asked after a moment of silence.

"W-we were doing tree-climbing on… on our mission."

"How'd that go?"

"N-not very well. We stopped working on it after Akamaru was injured… b-but I was the worst at it on my team."

Naruto frowned. "I doubt that, you always had great chakra control."

"I-I did?" Hinata asked in surprise.

The blond ninja's eyes widened ever so slightly. "Um, well, I mean you _look_ like you would have great chakra control. Plus, I think girls are naturally better at that than boys." He was speaking quickly, as if he was nervous, and seemed to have noticed it because he quickly got back on subject. "Do you want to work on tree climbing then?"

"B-but you already know it, Naruto-kun!" Hinata protested, really looking up for the first time since they'd reached the training site.

Naruto shrugged. "Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean I can't help you. That's why we're here."

Hinata lowered her head again. "Y-yes, of course."

Naruto reached out and poked her in the forehead. "Don't look down," he told her sternly, "_ever_."

"S-sorry."

Sasuke was shocked. He'd never seen this side of Naruto before. His blond teammate was acting like some sort of special instructor or something. Hinata wasn't anything special, but at the Academy she – and everyone else, for that matter – had been light-years ahead of Naruto. Apparently that had changed in the month and a half since they'd graduated and obviously she wasn't the one who was helping him to improve so quickly.

"No, don't be sorry," Naruto told her softly, a bright smile splitting his face, "just don't look down like you have something to be ashamed of, you don't. You just need a little confidence, that's all."

Hinata nodded and started to lower her head, but the action was stopped by Naruto's finger poking her in the head. "I mean it," he told her, "keep your head up. You're Hyuuga Hinata, the best damn heiress your clan has ever seen! You're going to write the book on being a kickass leader, right?"

Hinata mumbled something, started to lower her head, but caught herself before she got poked again.

"I didn't hear you. I said, 'right?'"

"R-right," Hinata finally managed without much conviction.

Naruto shook his head. "It's worse than I remembered," he groaned. "Okay, try this: I'll say 'right?' and you say 'Hell yeah!' as loud as you can."

Even from his tree, Sasuke could see Hinata's face flush in embarrassment.

"Right?"

"H-h-hell… y-yeah!" Hinata stuttered about as loud as an acorn falling on wet grass.

Naruto chuckled. "Never mind, don't cuss… ever. You're no good at it."

"S-sor—"

"Don't say that," he cut her off, switching back into instructor mode, "you don't have to be sorry. Some people just don't have the talent for using bad words. I blame your poor upbringing."

Hinata opened her mouth to apologize again, apparently not realizing that he was teasing her, but stopped and nodded instead, keeping her head mostly up when she was finished.

"Alright, let's climb some trees!" Naruto cheered, leading her over to two good sized oaks at the edge of the clearing.

Sasuke watched with great interest as Naruto had Hinata show him her tree climbing ability, which involved running straight up the trunk of the tree using – obviously – nothing but chakra to hold her feet to the wood. She made it about half way up before slipping and leaping lightly from branch to branch all the way down. Naruto praised her efforts far more than Sasuke thought necessary, and then went about giving her tips, watching her try it again and then adding more tips. After several tries she could make it three quarters of the way up before giving up.

Naruto smiled broadly as she landed after her most recent try. "That was great, Hinata-chan!" he said proudly.

Hinata blushed, but didn't argue with the compliment, he'd already told her twice just to accept them and not try to humbly deny his praise.

He glanced towards the horizon and sighed. "The sun will be up soon, we should hurry before too many people start coming by." He thought for a moment and then said, "Why don't we try walking up the tree instead of running?"

"W-walking?"

"Yeah, it's the same idea, just takes a little more concentration. We'll go together." And so they did, step by step they walked up the tree, Naruto's eyes locked on Hinata as if it didn't take any concentration at all for him to defy gravity. Hinata's eyes remained firmly on her tree.

They were nearly at the top, right where the trunk grew too small for both of them to continue together, when Hinata finally slipped, she was already rotating in the air to get her feet under her when Naruto caught her by the back of her jacket and helped her get her feet back on the tree. Then he watched from a nearby branch as she made it the rest of the way to the top. His crowing cheers probably woke half the village.

Sasuke hated to admit it, but he was impressed. Pissed, but impressed. There was no denying it or blaming it on dumb luck anymore. Naruto _was_ more than he seemed, just as Sakura had told him a week ago. Kakashi hadn't even taught them tree climbing yet – in fact, it was only mentioned in passing by one of the instructors at the Academy – but Naruto already had it mastered to the point where he could teach someone else. It was hard to reconcile the chronic screw up he thought his teammate was supposed to be with the person he'd just seen. They looked the same, they acted basically the same, but there seemed to be no way they could actually _be_ the same person.

With their practice done, Naruto and Hinata walked back towards the village. Hinata looked tired from the training, while Naruto just seemed happy. As they reached the spot closest to Sasuke's hiding place, Naruto paused, just for a half step before continuing on. It wasn't much, but it was enough to make Sasuke think that the blond might have realized that someone had been watching him. Another level of ability that Sasuke couldn't believe Naruto would be capable of only a week ago.

When the two ninja were gone, Sasuke dropped from the tree and headed for his apartment, making sure to take a route that would not have him following them. He had a lot to think about, and some catching up to do. Naruto _was_ ahead, at least in a couple of areas, but it wouldn't last… Sasuke wouldn't let it. He was the Uchiha genius, after all. No screw up ninja with parents so irrelevant no one even knew who they were was going to be able to surpass him.

He would catch Naruto – with or without the blond's help – then he would catch Kakashi, and then, at long last, he would become stronger than his brother. And when that day arrived, his clan would finally be avenged.

But first things first.

ooo

Sakura glanced wearily at her two teammates. Were they still mad at her? Naruto didn't seem to be, if he ever even was. He was leaning against a wooden fence with a contented smile on his face, looking like he didn't have a care in the world. Sasuke was leaning against the same fence, but with a very different expression on his face. He wasn't exactly frowning, but it seemed to be only through a concerted conscious effort that he was keeping his mouth from forming a frown. Every few seconds his eyes would shift towards Naruto and then quickly dart away while his mouth gave another shot at frowning before he caught himself and returned to a more neutral expression.

_'Sasuke is still angry,'_ Sakura thought to herself, _'but Naruto looks like he's already forgotten, how typical. I hope I don't get blamed if we do badly on our mission today…'_

A voice inside of her roared that she ought to kick Naruto's ass for having screwed up their team chemistry – not to mention causing Sasuke to skip their semi-routine training time together. Sakura enjoyed the voice's suggestions but was glad she they were only thoughts. The last thing she wanted was for someone to think that she could be so violent and rude, and besides, Naruto wouldn't have intentionally caused trouble for the team. In fact, he'd been everything a person could ask for in a teammate the last couple of days. If he was the cause of the trouble on the team this time, it was only because he'd let his hormones get the better or him the previous day and that was an understandable – if annoying – thing for a boy his age to do.

Another thought occurred to her as Sasuke again started to look at Naruto before stopping himself, this time being obvious enough about it that the still smiling blond glanced at him as well, would _she_ be the one who would have to reconcile this rift in the team? With her luck, probably. She was the girl, after all, the only one on the team emotionally mature enough to deal with the issue logically and fairly.

"This is all your fault, Naruto," she said and then clamped her hand over her mouth. She hadn't _actually_ meant to say it out loud; it was just something the voice that represented her less inhibited side had been yelling.

Naruto looked at her and frowned. "What is?"

Well, she'd already gone this far, she couldn't just say nothing without looking stupid in front of Sasuke. "If you'd just done that stupid mission with us instead of running off on your own, we wouldn't have had to do that training and we wouldn't all be mad at each other!"

"We're mad at each other?" the blond asked in confusion.

"_Some_ of us are."

"Oh," he shrugged, "…sorry. I figured since we all screwed up in the training we'd all just get over it and realize it wasn't really anyone's fault."

He didn't sound very sorry to her and he'd basically shoved an equal helping of blame on her and Sasuke, but then clueless people like him rarely even understood the mistakes they made. It wasn't his fault, he just didn't know better… of course, it would have been nice if he could have at least _acted_ like he cared or knew that his actions during the _mission_ had led to them having the terrible training session.

Sakura let out a huff of annoyance and crossed her arms. The temptation to smack him was rising and she didn't want to give into the urge to look unladylike in front of Sasuke. Besides, he'd sort of apologized… a little… though it wasn't even _half_hearted. Maybe he secretly had been a little mad as well and really didn't think it was just his fault. That made sense. Some of her friends from the Academy had occasionally done that, trying to act as though nothing was wrong when they actually were very upset. She and Ino had pretended to still be friends to each other's faces for quite a while after realizing that they both liked Sasuke. Yes, that might explain it…

Regardless of Naruto's feelings on the matter, Sakura knew she would just have to forgive him. She would take the higher road and let his transgression pass now that he'd basically apologized. It was the best thing for the team and, despite his cluelessness, he was a good enough guy to deserve it anyway. Plus, it would show Sasuke how mature she was. Now if only her chest would grow a little bit, she'd practically be the perfect woman! Then, with a few more years of training under her belt, she'd not only be the perfect woman, but she'd be the perfect woman for _him_.

"Sorry I'm late," Kakashi said as he landed on the fence just above Naruto's head. "This little old man was playing shogi and…"

"Don't lie!" Sakura yelled, while Naruto laughed and Sasuke just looked annoyed.

"Sakura-chan, truth is in the eye of the beholder," Naruto snickered. "I'm sure there's a little old man playing shogi in all of us who occasionally needs a couple of pointers in his game or a glass of water or something. Right sensei?"

Sakura's fist came down with enough force on the top of his head that his knees buckled. "The _truth_ to this beholder is that you deserved that!"

She instantly regretted losing her temper, even if Naruto deserved it this time for making such a stupid joke and ignoring the fact that his actions had caused the tension on the team. All of her efforts to show Sasuke how mature she was had seemed to have flown out the window. Punching just seemed to be her natural reaction to Naruto whenever he did something annoying that he thought was funny. She hadn't hit him in weeks it seemed, at least not hard or in real anger. Apparently she was angrier about the day before than she'd realized.

"Sorry," she whispered to him so quietly that he probably couldn't hear her over his own grumblings. She forced herself to check Sasuke's reaction, and was relieved to find that he was smiling… or close enough, anyway. Sakura vowed to punch Naruto every morning for the rest of her life if that was what it took to get a smile from Sasuke… well, maybe only every other day and only at half strength or less.

Naruto slowly stood, rubbing his head and glowering at her, while Kakashi explained the plan for the day – which was the same as most every other day – and then he led them into the Hokage Tower. Their first mission was simple: babysitting a council member's four year old grandson and his two friends for a few hours while the parents and grandparents ran some errands and enjoyed their time off. The kids avoided Naruto early on, and seemed to generally fear dark and brooding Sasuke, which left much of the direct childcare to Sakura, but she didn't mind. The children warmed to Naruto, who was surprisingly good with kids – and, to a lesser extent, Sasuke, who wasn't very good with kids – soon enough anyway and the time passed easily enough.

When they were done, Kakashi took them back to the Tower and they were given a crop harvesting mission. Again it was handled easily and Sakura was impressed with the teamwork they showed, especially considering how badly the previous day had gone. Naruto was as flawless in the missions as he'd been all week, which was still a strange change from the way he'd previously been when he often made obvious, stupid mistakes through simple thoughtlessness. In fact, with his clones adding to their manpower, the mission was much easier because of him – something that would never have happened before those days he was sick.

By the end of that mission, the boys were dirty and looked tired. Sakura was also tired, but she'd made a conscious effort to remain clean and – despite the efforts of a couple of Naruto's clones who tried to "accidentally" hit her with a shovelful of dirt once or twice – had generally succeeded. Certainly she'd fared better than Naruto and Sasuke who seemed to have brought half the farm's topsoil back with them. After reporting in and receiving their pay, as well as a little good-natured teasing from Iruka, Kakashi took them out to one of the practice fields.

At first, Sakura thought that maybe they were going to have to do more "teamwork building" exercises, but instead Kakashi sat them down in a circle and said, "I think tomorrow I will be asking Hokage-sama to assign us a C Rank mission."

All three genins' eyes widened.

"You three had a hard day yesterday, the training didn't go well and when you were dismissed you all were so angry that you couldn't even say two words to one another, but today you had already put it behind you and worked together as a team… the way you have to in the field."

For a moment, no one said anything, but then Naruto jumped to his feet, pointed an accusing finger at Kakashi, and shouted, "You gave of that crappy training yesterday so we'd get mad at each other!"

Kakashi shrugged. "I didn't _force_ you to get mad at each other. You could have easily finished it without acting like little children."

Naruto's eyes hardened as he realized something. "You sabotaged us! I knew I didn't mess up that first throw to Sasuke! That was—" Sakura's hand clamped over his mouth and she dragged him back to the ground before he got them in trouble with any wild accusations.

"What sort of mission are you going to try to get us?" Sasuke asked as Naruto struggled with Sakura. The last thing they needed was for him to say something idiotic that might take away their opportunity to tackle a real mission. Sasuke could barely believe that he was currently feeling _a little_ inferior to someone like Naruto.

"Nothing too hard for this first one," Kakashi promised – no doubt realizing that he was dashing the hopes of two of his genin while allowing the third breath a sigh of relief – "but, assuming there are any appropriate ones available, we'll probably be away from the village for a few days."

With that said, he had them get up and ran a sort of review session for everything that he had taught them to that point. To Sakura's great surprise, neither she nor Naruto had any trouble with any of the taijutsu forms or ninjutsu they had been learning since graduation. Apparently her training with Sasuke was having some real benefits.

After the review and a few instructions on what to put in the bags incase they got the sort of mission Kakashi was hoping for, they were dismissed. The words "See you tomorrow" were barely out of Naruto's mouth before he was rounding a corner and heading for… wherever Naruto went. Ichiraku, probably. Sakura thought it strange that he didn't ask Sasuke if he'd like to train – as he'd been pestering their teammate to do all week – but then Naruto had always been the unpredictable one on their team.

Kakashi also made his exit, leaving Sakura and Sasuke alone at the training area. Neither said anything for a painfully awkward minute and she wondered if he might just leave as well. It wasn't like it was a rule or anything that the two of them would train together after Kakashi dismissed them, but she had missed spending time with him the previous day.

"Well, uh…" she started wondering how he would take it if she offered to train with him some more. Technically, she was usually the one who asked him or else they just did it without anyone saying anything, but after having sort of a fight both with Naruto and each other, she didn't want to presume too much. "…I guess…"

"Do you want to go practice something with me?" Sasuke asked suddenly.

Sakura couldn't agree fast enough. "Yes, yes, of course, anything I can do to help!"

Sasuke led her over to a nearby tree and looked up at it. "I saw… _someone_… doing a tree climbing exercise this morning. He just put his feet on the tree and walked up it. He didn't use his hands at all."

Sakura looked down at her own feet and tried to recall a lesson that would pertain to such a skill. "You'd have to use chakra, obviously… but I would think it would take a lot of control to do something like that."

Sasuke put his foot against the tree, trying to concentrate his chakra into his feet, and pushed down on it.

It slid almost as easily as if there were no chakra there at all.

"This won't be easy," Sakura observed. She took two steps back, centered herself, and then walked deliberately towards the tree and tried to walk up it. She managed three steps before slipping and nearly smacking her head against the trunk. Sasuke caught her by the back of her dress before she could hurt herself and her feet dropped to the ground. "Thanks," she whispered shyly, her cheeks growing pink.

He shrugged and looked back at the tree. "The _person_ I saw was helping someone else learn it also. She started by trying to run up the tree before he made her walk… maybe running is easier?"

The two genin each took running starts at their tree and met with slightly more success. Six full steps for Sakura, four for Sasuke. Sakura wasn't sure if she should be pleased or not that she seemed to be better at it than her crush.

She took one look at Sasuke's face and decided on "not."

Tension seemed to fill the air as he looked at her tree and then at his own. Sakura almost wanted to apologize, but before she could, Sasuke was running at his tree once again.

Five steps this time.

"Damn it!" he yelled as he flipped backwards off the tree and landed easily on his feet. "Why can't I do this? _He_ made it look so easy this morning!"

Sakura wasn't sure who 'he' was, but she knew it wouldn't be wise to ask. She'd never seen Sasuke look the way he looked now. His emotions were usually buried deep, but something – this mysterious 'he,' perhaps – had brought them closer to the surface than they she'd ever seen before.

Again Sasuke ran at the tree and again he only managed five steps. Sakura decided that she should keep working at it and not just stare at him uselessly. Maybe if she figured it out, she would be able to help him. That was basically what Naruto had told her she had to do, right? Make herself useful to the man she loved with every fiber of her soul. She ran at the tree, took two steps and then slid back down. A frustrating set back, but an enlightening one. She'd been thinking of Sasuke when she did it, not about her feet or the tree or anything else. If she wanted to do this, she probably had to relax and focus.

She stood a little farther away from the tree than she had been and closed her eyes, pushing thoughts of Sasuke, her own insecurities, Sasuke, their upcoming mission, Sasuke, how hungry she was beginning to feel, and – most importantly – _Sasuke_ out of her mind. She could feel the chakra flowing through her body and she willed it down towards her feet, not all of it at once, but a nice, even flow. She let out a slow breath, feeling her muscles relax, and then opened her eyes and ran as fast as she could at the tree.

Five steps, then ten, fifteen, and then twenty. She could tell that she was approaching her limit before her foot actually slipped and chose to grab a large branch and swing herself up onto it rather than falling back down. A little giggle slipped through her lips, she'd done it, and nearly perfectly to boot. "That wasn't so hard," she told herself with a smile. Then she looked down at Sasuke.

He was on his knees, his fingers pushed into the earth like the claws of an angry animal. No cheering for her, no congratulations, just rage that she'd surpassed him. It was a bit heartbreaking and perhaps even a little annoying that he couldn't just be happy for her… but she loved him and understood why he would feel that way. He was supposed to be the best after all and she was beating him even though she'd never even seen the skill preformed before. He was just mad at himself… mostly.

Sakura carefully dropped back down to the ground and walked over to him. "If you wan—"

"I'll figure it out on my own!" he snapped, and then to further show that the conversation was over he ran at the tree.

Three steps later, the wood shattered under his foot and he fell backwards, landing hard on his back.

Sakura winced, not sure what she was supposed to do. A part of her, the voice that offered advice from normally-repressed philistine emotional responses, wanted to give him a good shake and perhaps one of the smacks that was normally reserved for Naruto, but the voice was easy enough to push aside in this instance. She walked forward and put a hand on Sasuke's shoulder. "Sasuke-kun, I… I can help you… I _want_ to help you… if you want me to," she told him with a nervous smile.

Sasuke looked up at her, his face was unguarded and for the briefest of moments she could see his desire to take her up on the offer, but then he shrugged her hand away and walked back to his starting spot to take another shot at it. "Everyone's so worried about helping me lately," he grumbled irritably, "you'd think I was the one with the low test scores on the team."

Sakura flinched under the blow of the insult and took a step back. Sasuke was already ignoring her, his eyes locked on the tree. She sighed and looked to the heavens for answers. None came from above, but an idea did occur to her.

"Fine," she said as he managed seven steps before falling, "I won't help you. Obviously you can figure it out on your own." As the plan took shape in her mind, she almost laughed at her own deviousness. What a clever (as well as beautiful) wife she'd be for Sasuke someday! "I'll just try it one more time and then I'm going to go home and eat."

She stepped to her starting point and looked at the tree. "First, I'll close my eyes and push all of the distractions out… easy enough. Then I'll feel my chakra flowing through my body and push it down towards my feet. Oh, but I'll have to be careful not to push to hard or it won't work. After that, I'll open my eyes and run at the tree, picturing myself going higher and higher and not thinking about anything but the tree and my chakra." She ran at the tree and did just as she'd said. When she reached her previous high she once again caught the branch and swung onto it. "Hmm, that was just as easy as before. Guess I've figured out the trick… not that anyone cares or needs _my_ help, of course."

She dropped to the ground, making sure not to look at Sasuke, and walked away, her heart racing. She desperately wanted to turn and run back to him, apologize for acting so rudely – even if he'd been rude first – and tell him that it was all pure luck, that if it weren't for that luck she really would be hard pressed to even make it as high as he could. More than that, she wanted to turn around and see if he was taking her suggestions and having more success with it.

But she couldn't. She knew Sasuke, or at least knew him better than almost anyone else did, he wouldn't like it if she looked back at him. He might even continue to do it his own way, and probably would eventually succeed, rather than letting himself be seen taking advice given to him out of what he would consider _pity_. Never mind that she didn't pity him and only wanted to be useful to him, his mind would be made up and it would take him the better part of a week to do what she could help him learn to do in a few hours.

Sometimes it was hard being the future wife of such a complex man, but no one ever said true love was easy.

ooo

Sasuke watched Sakura leave out of the corner of his eye and scowled. She thought she was so clever, telling him how to do it like that, as if he really needed help! He didn't need her pity or her help or even her presence; he was an Uchiha, _the _Uchiha! If he was going to avenge his clan, certainly he could figure out how to do this.

He turned his attention back to the tree and glared at it as if it were mocking him and his pitiful attempts to scale it.

Naruto had done it with ease… Sakura had figured it out in only a few tries… was he really this weak?

He sighed and checked to make sure that Sakura was indeed gone and not waiting for him to use her method. Then, reassured, he closed his eyes and let out a slow breath, trying to push all of the distracting thoughts of failure, humiliation, and revenge from his mind. With that more or less accomplished, he went deeper and felt his chakra flowing through him. With a great deal of effort he pushed it towards his feet, but not in the excessive way he'd tried before – because that would push him away from the tree – and not the minimal way that had caused him to slip during the tries before that. He could feel the right amount after a moment, or at least he thought it might be the right amount since he had no idea what it would really take. Then he opened his eyes and focused in on the tree as he ran towards it.

He wouldn't fail.

He was an Uchiha.

He was the best!

At eighteen steps his concentration and control faltered and he was forced to push off, bouncing between that tree and the one next to it as he made his way back to the ground. He landed smoothly and looked up. He would have to start using something to mark his progress, but from the branches he'd passed on the way down, he'd nearly made it has high as Sakura had. Still not quite good enough, but he had it now; it wouldn't be long before he'd mastered it.

_'Sakura was right,'_ he sighed, groaning inwardly. He didn't feel necessarily bad at having brushed off her attempts to help him, he hadn't _wanted_ her help, but maybe he should have at least heard her out… it couldn't have hurt, even if it made him feel weak to have another genin teaching him how to do something. Besides, he'd been ready to go to Naruto for help only that morning, hadn't he? What difference did it make if he went to Sakura for help instead?

Well, it was in the past now and if she thought he was going to apologize or admit _out loud_ that she was right, she had another thing coming. He would have figured it out on his own, he hadn't really needed her help.

He took another run at the tree.

Four steps, then back down.

"Fine," he grumbled to the tree, "I'll apologize next time I see her."

A breeze rustled the leaves, making it look as though his adversary were laughing at him. Sasuke pulled a kunai from the pouch on his thigh to mark his progress.

"We'll see who's laughing at the end of the day," he vowed as he closed his eyes and centered himself once more.

ooo

The moon was full that night, but there was enough cloud cover that the shadows in the alleys and corners were deep. With the village long settled into its slumber, a single dark form went completely unnoticed as it darted quickly from shadow to shadow, sometimes crawling along walls like some sort of enormous insect or running along the underside of balconies. Even the guards of the village had grown drowsy, the long peace and the lack of credible threats they'd enjoyed for so many years had dulled their wits and brought them to a place of complacency.

The shadowy figure snorted contemptuously as he passed right over the head of a nodding chuunin who was supposed to be guarding the front door to the Hokage Tower. In his day, such lack of discipline was unheard of. If an enemy didn't kill you while you slept, a friend would beat you black and blue for such foolishness. Such negligence wasn't grounds for a court martial or execution, of course, but that was as much because there weren't enough able bodies to go around as it was because such harsh discipline would be deemed excessive, even in times of war.

The window on the second story was locked securely, but the next one up wasn't. Hard earned experienced left the shadow clinging to the wall, not moving a muscle or making a sound, as he waited for nearly ten minutes to get the inner guard's schedule down. Every four minutes, a chuunin – or maybe even a jounin – would walk by, lightly pressing on the window to make sure that it was still securely closed, and then move on. He didn't even look outside as he made his rounds, he was simply on autopilot.

The shadow waited for the loop to begin again, counted to twenty, and then eased the window open just enough for him to slither through. The second he was inside he closed the window tightly and then scaled the wall so he could crawl along the ceiling. Again he waited for the guard to pass, every muscle tense and ready to spring into action should he be discovered. The chuunin touched the window, as he had the other three times he'd made his loop and then continued on without even pausing.

This time the shadow only waited ten seconds before moving, dropping silently to the ground and moving as quickly and quietly as possible along the guard's route. There were usually candles or lamps burning late into the night in the Hokage Tower, but even they had been extinguished by this point. The guard probably had a flashlight with him, but he wisely wasn't using it as it would give away his position to anyone waiting in the dark, not that it really mattered, he was making things easy enough as it was. The lack of light didn't bother the intruder in the slightest. He knew every step, every creaky board, and every potential obstacle in the building without having to see them. He'd wandered these halls in the dark so often there was nothing left that could surprise him, except an alert guard, but those didn't seem to exist for the moment.

He reached a flight of stairs and took them until he was two floors up, then down a hall, silently stalking yet another guard, and finally into the records room. Once there, with the door securely closed and three strips of dark tape insuring that no light would be visible along the seams of the door, he pulled a flashlight from his pocket and turned it towards the stacks of scrolls.

Fortunately everything was organized exactly the same as they were when he was in charge. It only took him a few minutes to find the scrolls detailing the missions that would be available to be assigned the following day.

He mouthed the word "Damn" – not being foolish enough to even whisper it when a guard could potentially be walking by – as his eyes quickly scanned the C rank missions. It was as he'd feared, all of them were far too easy. He gave himself a mental pat on the back for having thought up such a sneaky (if slightly dangerous) plan and picked up the scrolls for the B rank missions. Some looked promising, but he nearly resigned himself to pulling an A rank mission when he spotted just what he was looking for.

A little mining town, several days walk from Konoha, was being terrorized by bandits – bandits that were led by at least one ninja of undetermined level, approximated as mid to high jounin. Apparently someone had recently discovered a gold vein in what was considered to be mostly an iron mine. Somehow bandits had gotten wind of this and had been stealing shipments of the precious metal (as well as anything else they could get their hands on) from the town as soon as it was shipped somewhere. Three miners had also been killed in a raid.

_'Perfect,_' Naruto thought as his eyes scanned over the rest of the mission details in the scroll. It was exactly what he was looking for: not too difficult, but hard enough to force some growth and team bonding.

Naruto smiled under the dark towel he'd wrapped around his head for a mask and he removed a brush, an ink bottle, and a similar looking scroll from the pouch on his hip. It was almost too easy. A few changes here and there, removing any mention of the word 'ninja' as well as reducing the estimates on the number of bandits in the gang by over half, completely omitting the part about the miners getting killed, adding in wording that seemed to imply that the raids weren't all that frequent – mostly occurring when a caravan left with a shipment – and then adding the mission's name to the right list, and suddenly a B rank mission was a C rank mission. The only problem would be if the mission was given out before his team came up to get it.

There was a solution to this problem, but it was risky.

Sometimes a jounin would request a specific mission for their team, after consulting with a member of the Hokage's staff and seeing what was available. Usually it was something the less experienced jounin would do when they felt that their team was ready to start handling harder missions, but wanted to make sure that they didn't bite off more than they could chew. Kurenai would probably do it when Team Eight was ready to start doing missions again, or at least _would_ have if they hadn't been thrown into the fire already and come out with only one major injury. It was because those jounin weren't used to dealing with genin in life or death situations, having had chuunin and jounin on their teams for most of their careers prior to that. It was highly unlikely that someone with Kakashi's skills and confidence in his abilities would make such a request, but if his name were to be placed on the scroll, the mission would be reserved for Team Seven regardless of how late their jounin was.

After a short debate, Naruto scratched an approximation of Kakashi's signature on the scroll, rolled it back up, and put it with the other C rank missions while he began returning everything to its proper shelf. The real copy of the mission was tucked into his pouch to be burned when he got home.

Someone might either notice that the signature was not actually Kakashi's – Naruto hadn't seen the real thing in quite a few years, but he'd done the best he could – or comment to Kakashi about reserving the mission and be told that he hadn't, but the risk of them figuring out who had made the deception was low. At worst, an inquiry would be sent out, the truth would be discovered, and there would be an investigation into the possibility that the mission had intentionally been tampered with for nefarious reasons – like the death of the last Uchiha or of the despised Jinchuuriki – no one would come to the conclusion that a genin had intentionally manipulated the scroll to give his team a more difficult mission.

Unless, of course, they didn't send out the inquiry and realize that the mission was _not_ a C rank and sent out another unsuspecting genin team to handle what would probably be beyond them…

Naruto shook his head. That wouldn't happen, not this time. He'd taken all of the necessary precautions, everything would be fine.

And if it wasn't? He'd go straight to the Third and confess everything; he wouldn't let another group of people suffer because of his mistakes. Sarutobi was a good man with a sharp mind. He'd _probably_ be able to handle that sort of information… maybe.

As he stole out of the room and began working his way out of the Tower, Naruto's mind turned briefly to the mess that had been the Wave Country mission. Hinata hadn't had anymore information on Akamaru that morning, but had insisted that no news was _good_ news since it meant he'd survived the night – which apparently was a slight concern. Even if he survived, Akamaru had lost an eye because of Naruto's foolish complacency and reliance on his supposed knowledge of the future. That was still a bitter pill to swallow, but it would be far easier to deal with if Akamaru lived. He'd learned his lesson, though, and now that he was actively changing things, he wouldn't make those mistakes again. Complacency had nearly killed Akamaru, it could have killed the rest of Team Eight, and it might have helped Haku kill himself before Naruto could stop him, it was sad that it seemed everyone _but_ him had to pay for him to learn not to rely so much on what he knew about the future. He hoped that from this point on, the punishment for his mistakes would fall on him and not some innocent bystander.

He slipped through the window, down the wall, and into a side street. After checking to make sure that he wasn't being followed he removed the towel from his head, shook the sweat from his blond locks and casually strolled back towards his apartment.

As he reached his home, a thought he hadn't considered since his time in the Wave Country dawned on him: what if it had been Haku's _fate_ to die that day?

Regardless of the team that had taken the mission, the fact remained that the same three people who had been most noticeable on the bridge that day – Haku, Zabuza, and Gato – had all met their end, just as they had the first time. If Akamaru survived, the result would be almost exactly the same as what it had been when it was his team on the bridge. Then there was the tree climbing that Team Eight had done, the fact that Zabuza had been incapacitated by Haku after the fight by the lake, the attack on Tazuna's house…

Naruto didn't believe in fate – though he often had to remind himself of that – but since waking up in the past, there had been several coincidences left him wondering just how sure he was that there was no fate except the one a man makes for himself.

"Until I kill Orochimaru," he told the ceiling as he stared up at it and prayed for sleep to take him even if it meant more nightmares again, "there are no guarantees anything will change."

The Chuunin exam wasn't very far off – assuming that Kakashi was _fated_ to enter them. He had to be ready for it when the time came. It was there that he'd be fighting for his future.

o

o

A/N: A quick update because the chapter didn't need many changes from what had already been written and because I don't feel like waiting a week to post more for whatever reason… let's blame it on getting a pretty good number of reviews real quick for the last chapter. For those of you who feel the urge to complain about such things, please try to remember that Naruto getting hit by Sakura is just meant to be funny… it in no way has anything to do with his skill as a ninja – just as it doesn't in the series. If you want to get technical about it then let's just assume that Naruto _allows_ her to hit him – subconsciously, perhaps – as a nostalgic reminder of his childhood or because he feels that such punishment is fair when he makes bad or annoying jokes/comments.

Well, this was kind of a Sakura and Sasuke heavy chapter, but I think it works. I've always kind of liked the idea of Sasuke feeling inferior to his two teammates (especially since, in the area of tree climbing and maybe even chakra control in general, he really _is_ behind them at this point). As was seen in the manga/anime during the Wave Country arc, Sasuke is capable of asking for help when he feels his superiority threatened or is seeing results, but he's also quick to be shamed into refusing the help if he thinks he's being looked down upon.

Sorry about not replying to all – or even most – of your reviews, but I figure a new chapter is better than some boring note from me. Hope you all enjoyed it. Please review.


	16. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

o

_'Naruto looks like he didn't sleep at all last night,'_ Hinata thought as she caught sight of him coming down the road towards the spot where she was waiting for him. As he walked, he gave an exaggerated, sleepy yawn, stretching his arms above his head, and then slapped his cheeks twice in an attempt to wake himself up. _'And instead of sleeping he's up helping me because I'm so pathetic…'_

She bit her lip, looked down at the ground, and closed her eyes, feeling badly for being such an inconvenience to him.

Her head and eyes were lowered for less than two seconds before a finger poked her in the forehead. "I told you not to do that," Naruto admonished her in a cheerful – though noticeably tired – voice. "When you look down like that, people think they can push you around and that you're weak or afraid, but you aren't weak and it doesn't matter one damn bit if you're afraid because you're still brave and that's what counts."

Hinata didn't bother to correct him, they'd had this discussion the previous day after they finished with the tree climbing and she wasn't _brave_ enough to force him to see that he was wrong about her. Also, it was nice to have someone saying things like that, even if they weren't exactly true.

"F-forgiv—"

"Uh-uh-uh, none of that either!"

Hinata floundered around for the correct response. Etiquette dictated that she should apologize for her mistake, but Naruto told her he didn't want her apologizing, or lowering her head, or begging forgiveness, or any of her other programmed responses. It was maddeningly difficult to overcome thirteen years of training just because Naruto didn't want her doing it around him, but etiquette _also_ demanded that she accept the conversational rules of the party she wished to speak with.

"Y-You're right, Naruto-kun… my mistake," she managed at last. It was still sort of an apology or at least an admission of guilt, but it didn't really break the rules he was trying to get her to follow.

Naruto gave her a grin that let her know he knew what she was doing and then chuckled as he rolled his eyes. "Close enough, I guess."

Hinata managed a weak smile in return and handed him a small container with a light breakfast she'd prepared for him. He'd seemed to enjoy the food she made the day before and it was a way that she could – to a small extent – repay him for the kindness of helping her. Naruto happily accepted and ate ravenously as he led her back to the training grounds and over to the tree they'd climbed before.

In between bites, he asked what her father had thought when she told him about the mission to the Wave Country. Hinata's answer was vague and Naruto eventually let it drop. The truth was that her father hadn't said much after she'd told him of the mission. She imagined that he was somewhat pleased to have a bridge named after his daughter and that she'd been something of an asset to her team, but was displeased that only through the intervention of a stranger – or ghost – had her team to survive and that she had done so little against Haku and Zabuza in the two main battles. All things considered, she was just happy that he hadn't felt her failures on the mission had brought disgrace to the clan. A neutral response to her mission was better than a negative one and was probably better than she deserved.

Just as Naruto had the day before, he made Hinata climb the tree on her own at first, to see what she'd retained. Her first attempt was pitiful, it was hard to focus with his eyes following her every movement, but after that she managed to calm her nerves and – to her great surprise – was able to make it all the way to the top of the tree on her next attempt. She'd had to climb the tree at a run, but it was a vast improvement over what she'd been capable of previously – so much so that she was certain she could have done it while running slower or even while walking.

Before she could hop from branch to branch to make her way down, Naruto was in the tree with her. "Let's walk down," he suggested.

Hinata swallowed hard and followed the tree trunk with her eyes all the way to the ground… it was a long ways. If she slipped going down, it would probably be more difficult to right herself in the air or catch onto a branch to save herself from a painful – and life threatening – landing than it would when she was traveling in the opposite direction.

"You can do it," Naruto assured her calmly. "It's just like going up. The only difference is the direction you're facing."

Hinata nodded uncertainly and took a deep breath. Naruto said she could do it, but she was beginning to find that Naruto had far more confidence in her than previous observations of her attempts should have warranted. If he ever spoke to anyone who really knew her, like the clan elders or her father, they would set the record straight in no time. But those people, thankfully, weren't here and she didn't want to disappoint him.

She took a second deep breath, tried to focus, and placed her feet against the tree. Naruto had been a little mistaken when he said it the only difference between going down and up was which direction you were looking. With every step she took, gravity tried to pull her down, to speed up her steps. It would be easy to try to run down the tree, but much more dangerous. If she ran, letting gravity pull her to higher and higher speeds, she would probably just run straight into the ground at the same speed as if she'd fallen. Going down meant she had to force herself to go slow and that was a pretty hard thing to keep up.

Naruto, however, didn't seem to be having any problems with it at all, he walked step for step with her, whispering encouragement and telling her to stay focused. Unfortunately, the sound of him telling her to focus was making it very difficult to actually do so.

She had only managed about ten steps when it happened. Naruto, still trying to encourage her, gently touched her hand and whispered, "You're almost half way there."

His touch was so unexpected that the last of her shaky concentration, along with her foot, slipped. Hinata pitched forward and completed a full flip in the air before Naruto's hand caught hold of hers. For a half second, it almost looked like he had saved her from the fall, but then her hands, sweaty with nervousness from being around him and the exertion of the training, slipped from his grasp and down she went. She landed hard on her back, the wet early morning grass as her only cushion, and felt all of the air rush out from her lungs.

She hadn't even had a chance to think about sitting up before Naruto was kneeling next to her. "Hinata-chan!" he yelled as if the fall had knocked out her hearing instead of her breath. "God, Hinata-chan, are you okay?!? I'm so sorry, I di—"

Hinata reached up and poked him in the forehead. "N-none of that," she croaked as she did her best to pull air back into her deflated lungs. Naruto looked surprised and then smiled. It was at that moment that Hinata realized what she had just done. She pulled her finger away from him as if she'd been burned and quickly sat up, her face on fire.

Naruto breathed a sigh of relief. "Sorry," he said again, "that was my fault, I shouldn't have distracted you… you were just doing so well, I… I guess I wasn't thinking, my bad."

"N-no, Naruto-kun, it's okay, I… I can't expect it to al-always be perfectly quiet when I use t-this, I should not have let… _anything_ distract me. The fault was mine."

Naruto smiled. "Should we just agree that we both screwed up and call it even?"

"I-if you want, Naruto-kun."

"Are you ready to try it again?"

Hinata wasn't, but she didn't want to tell him that. The second trip down the tree was roughly the same as the first, it was still difficult, but this time Naruto kept his mouth shut and his hands to himself. Hinata was only a few meters off the ground when she lost her footing again, this time because her body was growing tired after spending so much energy keeping her glued to the tree. The fall would have been short, but Naruto was prepared for it and caught her by the back of her jacket before she hit the ground.

After talking a little bit about how to hold her legs to keep the pressure of gravity from forcing her to move faster than she wanted to, Naruto asked if she would like to spar.

Hinata had wondered if he would bring this up – hoping that he wouldn't. She could barely control her nervousness while training in front of her father and other clan members, how much worse would it be with _his_ eyes on her? She tried to advise him that Hyuuga didn't use the same taijutsu style as what was taught in the Academy and even started to give him a short explanation of what the Juuken style was, but he waved her off before she'd managed to say more than a few words.

According to Naruto, he knew she did some sort of "weird taijutsu" and was interested in seeing it. He also guessed – quite astutely – that her teachers in the clan made her nervous when she trained in front of them. He thought that if she practiced on him in a spot where there was no one around that she felt the need to impress she would have a much easier time of it. That way she'd be able to build up her confidence so that when she was called upon to demonstrate her skill in front of other members of her clan she'd be much calmer. When the time came, she could imagine she was training with him and pretend that all of those people who normally made her nervous weren't there.

This, of course, was quite the opposite of how she felt about the situation – the thought of failing in front of him terrified her far more than failing in front of her father – that, at least, she was used to. On the other hand, she couldn't tell Naruto that without practically blurting out her feelings for him, so she had no choice but to weakly nod and accept his offer. Within a few minutes, however, she was wishing she'd humiliated herself by confessing instead of walking into the humiliation that was to come.

Naruto apparently hadn't just improved in his chakra control since leaving the Academy, his taijutsu – while unorthodox and seemingly full of holes – was, to put it mildly, _incredible_. He never attacked her and didn't even try to block her strikes; he simply spent the next ten minutes or so _dancing_ around her. To make matters worse, every now and then he would reach out a hand and tap her on the stomach, or the ribs, or her arm, and once up near her neck. It was distracting and embarrassing at the same time. Not only couldn't she touch him, but he was able to score points on her at will and with no apparent effort. If he was a Juuken user, he could have killed her ten times over before they were done… in fact, even using regular punches and kicks he could probably have killed her several times. And then at the end of their spar, as if to rub salt in the gaping wounds her meager pride had already sustained, just as she was trying to land one desperate blow to his stomach, Naruto's left foot slid forward and easily knocked her off balance. A light tap to the shoulder sent her to the ground.

Hinata suspected that if her father could see her now, lying in the damp grass having just made a mockery out of her family's ancient taijutsu style, she'd have found her personal items outside the Hyuuga gate by the time she got home and would have had to spend the rest of the day apartment hunting.

Naruto reached down to help her up. There was a smile was on his face and he surprisingly didn't seem mad at her for being such a bad sparring partner. In fact, he seemed rather happy about something.

_'Naruto-kun spent all those years being told how bad he was at everything, it must feel good to be able to beat someone who's family is supposed to be one of the elites,'_ Hinata thought dejectedly as she let him pull her to her feet. "I… I am sorr—"

Naruto poked her in the head with more force than any of his light taps from their sparring. "Don't apologize," he commanded in a surprisingly stern voice that left no room for argument. It was a voice that she'd heard her father use when give orders he expected to be carried out to the letter. Then he smiled and the authoritative aura around him vanished. "You did just fine."

"I… I did?"

"Yup, in fact, you're a lot better than I thought you would be."

Given how badly she'd just been beaten, Hinata wondered how what he must have thought of her before for _this_ to be seen as being "a lot better" than expected. She'd been entertaining ideas of Naruto thinking so highly of her for the last twenty-four hours, but now the truth seemed to be that she was simple surprising him by having slightly more skill than large rock. How silly of her to think that he was actually impressed by her.

"My problem is," he continued, "since you're this good… I'm not sure what _your_ problem is. I mean, I don't know your family's style or anything, so I can't give you pointers on form, but you seemed to move pretty well. Maybe you could stand to be a little more unpredictable, take a shot at hitting me when you see the opening even if it doesn't exactly fit in with the Juuken's traditional movements, but…" He paused and frowned, biting his lip thoughtfully. "Is this how you do things when you work in front of your family instructors?"

Hinata thought back over her sparing session with Naruto and tried to compare it to memories of her training with Hanabi. Perhaps she _had_ done a little better with Naruto, especially once it became clear how much of a gap there was between him and her, if for no other reason than because she desperately wanted to impress him, even if just a little. Of course, she always wanted to impress her father as well and generally tried to do her best against her sister… but with Naruto it was different, she realized. Even though she'd been unable to do anything against him, he hadn't acted angry or disappointed. In fact, she didn't think she'd ever seen him look at her as if he were disappointed, he just accepted where she was at and tried to help her improve. Her feelings for him – and the nervousness they produced – aside, his calm, encouraging smile left her feeling far less stressed than the gaze her father normally fixed her with where she knew that the moment she made a mistake he would frown and shake his head in resigned disappointment.

"I… I think y-you make me less nervous than my father does… sometimes," she whispered, feeling that she might be betraying her family by admitting such foolishness.

Naruto nodded and graced her with an understanding smile. "Okay then, I can maybe help you with that."

Hinata was about to ask him how, when he brought his hands together and said, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" Suddenly three more Narutos appeared behind him. The three clones instantly brought their hands together and said, "Henge no Jutsu!"

A cloud of smoke enveloped them and when it cleared three copies of her father were standing before her, scowling fiercely. The only hint that they weren't really him was the fact that there were three marks on each of their cheeks that looked exactly like the "whisker marks" (as she'd sometimes thought of them) on Naruto's face. The three immediately sat down and began staring at her with the stern look she'd often seen from her father. It was amazing how good of an impression Naruto was doing of him considering that he couldn't have seen him more than just a few times in his entire life.

"Do I make you nervous, Hinata-chan?" her father asked, glaring at her from his seated position.

Hinata didn't answer but started to take an involuntary step backwards. She wasn't sure what Naruto was trying to do, but it wasn't very pleasant at the moment and she wished he'd just go back to humiliating her while they sparred. As she backed away, she bumped into something behind her. She turned and found another copy of her father staring down his nose at her, his arms crossed in front of his chest.

"I asked you a question!" the disguised Naruto growled in her father's voice. "Do I make you nervous?"

"Y-y-yes," she whispered, cowering before him. Even knowing that it was simply Naruto in disguise, she couldn't seem to overcome the natural fear she felt whenever her father looked at her like that.

"Look at me!" he demanded and she was forced to comply. "Why are you scared of me?"

"N-Naruto-kun, I—"

Her father's face relaxed as Naruto probably realized that he might be taking it too far, but his eyes continued to bore into her. "Answer the question," he told her sternly.

"I-I don't know!" she admitted, turning her eyes towards the ground. "I just… I just want to make him proud… but I can't, b-because I'm too weak…"

"Hinata-chan," Naruto's voice whispered, "you aren't weak."

She looked up and found that Naruto was no longer transformed, though the three clones of her father were still sitting there, watching. "Naruto-kun, I…"

"Sorry, that might not have been the best idea," he admitted. "I just wanted to make sure that I was remembering where you and your dad were at this point. Come on, one more round," he said, smiling so kindly at her that she didn't think she could have refused him no matter what he asked of her. "Your dad's watching, but who cares? You can only do your best. Worrying about what impresses him won't help you. Just relax and forget about everything but you and me and what we're doing, got it?"

Hinata swallowed hard and nodded. She took a deep breath, settled her body into a shaky approximation of the Juuken first stance, and activated her Byakugan.

Naruto was already in his… whatever he would call that unorthodox form, still smiling. "It's just you and me, Hinata-chan, nothing else. Just two friends helping each other get stronger. It doesn't matter what your dad thinks, or says, or does. When you show him how strong you really are, I'm absolutely positive he'll acknowledge it and he'll probably feel stupid for having not realized how amazing you were earlier… and then you two will probably argue – as quietly and politely as possible – who was really at fault for at least a couple of weeks!"

Hinata didn't trust herself to speak, so she simply nodded, trying not to notice the three clones – which she could easily see even though they were situated to the side and behind her – or think about who they represented. She wished Naruto had asked her before transforming into her father, though she supposed it forced her to voice her real feelings. For some reason, having her father watching her, even when she knew it wasn't actually him, made this time with Naruto feel… wrong. This morning and the one before it had been her time to enjoy the company of the person she admired most, even if it generally involved her feeling nervous and inadequate. With her father, or at least the image of her father, sitting there watching her, the joy was lost.

Naruto moved first, surprising her since he hadn't really attacked once during the first time they sparred. His fists came in high, easily allowing her to duck under them, but his foot shot out as she did and her legs were swept out from under her. She landed on her butt in the dirt, but didn't have time to let the shock of the moment settle in as Naruto's other foot was already coming around to kick her. Hinata laid herself flat on the ground and then rolled away as Naruto's foot came down with enough force to actually crack the ground.

As she scrambled to her feet she heard a familiar voice call out from behind her. "Come on, Hinata-chan! Kick his ass!" Those were words that that voice had never and _should_ never say… at least not in her presence. Without turning her head she could see the three clones of her father standing and cheering her on.

"Hey, dumbasses," Naruto yelled, stopping and looking at them with an annoyed frown, "you're supposed to be her father. Act stern and… you know, like Hiashi."

The three Hiashis stuck out their tongues at Naruto and one even went so far as to turn around and slap his butt at the blond before making a rude gesture with his hand.

Hinata closed her eyes and pressed her lips very tightly together as she tried not to let out the giggle that was threatening to escape. It was so absurd to see her father acting like… well, like Naruto. Of course, in doing so the clones automatically forced her mind to label them as not being her father – in case there was any confusion – but it was still funny. She supposed that it might be dishonorable of her to laugh at her father being made fun of, unintentionally or not, but it took so much concentration to keep from laughing at the sight that she couldn't spare the thought to dwell on how bad of a daughter she was being.

"Sorry about that, Hinata-chan," Naruto said, bringing her back to the here and now. "They're just supposed to sit there and help you get used to tuning out your father while you spar."

"It's okay, Naruto-kun. It was… funny."

"Yeah, see?" one of the clones shouted. "She liked it, so shut the hell up!"

Naruto shook his head. "Alright, where were…" He paused as he felt his shoulder freeze up and looked down to find Hinata's fingers lightly pressed against his arm. "Hey!"

Hinata couldn't believe what she had done. It had been an impulse. Something about Naruto's comment to her about being less predictable earlier had popped into her head, and she'd given into the idea before she even realized what she was doing. Technically there had been no pause in their fight, though both of them had been distracted by the clones, so anytime either wanted to, they could have attacked the other. Not that that made it very fair, of course.

"You cheated," Naruto said in an accusing, though amused, voice.

"You didn't call a timeout," one Hiashi noted. "She didn't have to wait for you to start again!"

"You're getting your ass kicked by a girl!" yelled another. "Go Hinata-chan!"

The one next to him shook his head and added, "Just be glad that it's Hinata-chan, so at least its going to be a respectable defeat. What if it was Moegi-chan or Ino? You'd never live it down!"

Naruto bowed his head in defeat and sighed. "I guess this is what I get for telling you to be more unpredictable, but I never thought I'd see the day when Hyuuga Hinata would take advantage of an unsuspecting friend. I think I'm a bad influence on you, Hinata-chan."

The rest of the sparring session went about like their first, though Naruto did occasionally throw punches and kicks, mostly just to keep her on her toes, Hinata thought. Even with a shoulder that should have been partially incapacitated, Naruto was still clearly superior to her in every way she could see. The clones cheered for her throughout the match, occasionally making her laugh and making what would have been another humiliating defeat a little more fun.

Once they had finished and cooled down, Naruto walked her home. Along the way he told her that his jounin, Kakashi, was planning on getting a C rank mission for them, so there was a good chance that he wouldn't be around for the next week or so.

"Keep practicing, though," he told her, unnecessarily, "I want to see how awesome a tree climber you are when I get back. Oh, and if you have to spar with Hanabi, don't worry about your dad or anyone else who's watching, just pretend your with me, be a little unpredictable and kick her ass… or, you know, whatever Hyuuga siblings do." He paused and contemplated it for a moment, and then said, "Politely paddle her fanny, maybe?"

Hinata wasn't sure if that was supposed to be a joke, but she giggled softly and hoped she'd judged him right. Then, as the gate to her clan's quarters came into view a thought occurred to her. She'd never told Naruto that she and Hanabi sparred while their father was instructing them. It wasn't really hard to guess, of course, but it was weird that he said it like it was a known fact…

"Naruto-kun, how did you know I spar with Hanabi_-chan_ in front of father?"

Naruto's eyes widened briefly. "Uh, just a guess, I…" he glanced up at the rising sun and frowned, "Is it that late already?! Sorry, Hinata-chan, I've got to go. I'm going to be late. I'll see you when we get back."

Training kicked in and Hinata quickly bowed at the waist. "O-of course, Naruto-kun, have a g-good trip. I will see you when you return." When she looked up, he was already gone.

Were Hinata a more suspicious person, she might have thought that Naruto was dodging the question, but she was quite the opposite of a suspicious person – especially when it came to Naruto – so she let it go and went inside to get cleaned up before going to see Kiba and Akamaru.

ooo

To say that Naruto was pleased with himself would be an understatement. By _his_ estimation, he was probably one of the sneakiest, most clever, and intelligent ninja around. Not only was Hinata already looking like she might be ahead of where she'd been in the original timeline – and if she was able to imagine her father acting like his clones and relax enough to beat her little sister during one of their sparring matches, she'd be even better off – but his team would soon be on its way towards the sort of danger and excitement that built friendships and inspired rivalries… or at least, he _hoped_ it would do those things with his team.

There was a near disaster when Iruka told Kakashi that they had "_the_ mission" ready for him, but Kakashi didn't seem to notice the vague reference to the fact that a mission had been specifically set aside for his team. In all actuality, Kakashi probably _had_ noticed – very little seemed to slip past him – but since he hadn't actually requested a mission, he might have assumed that Iruka did not mean it in that way. Regardless, he didn't say anything and the right mission was given to them, so all of Naruto's hard work the night before did not go unrewarded.

As soon as they exited the Tower, Kakashi told them to head home, pick up any last minute items they might need for the trip, and then meet him at the village gates in one hour. Naruto was so elated that things had worked out and so excited to get going that he was at the gates in less than ten minutes.

It was strange to see the gates intact and undamaged – though he'd known they would be, of course. It filled him with a peculiar sense of peace to be once again reminded that the village he loved was back to the way it was supposed to be. No destroyed walls, no burnt gates, none of the sights he'd taken to associating with this portion of the village existed yet. And, with a little luck (and a bit of help from him) those massive ten meter tall gates would be just as impressive two decades from now as they were today.

Unfortunately, his speedy arrival left him standing around for nearly an hour and a half before Sasuke, Sakura, and lastly – by a good twenty-five minutes – Kakashi joined him. While he was excited to see the gates as they were meant to be, he wasn't _that_ excited about it. After thirty minutes – when Sasuke showed up – he'd grown tired of just staring up at them and was glad for the distraction.

Sasuke greeted him with a grunt and wandered off to the side to lean against a tree. Naruto peered at him quizzically, happy to have something new to look at and also wondering what his deal was. Sasuke had been acting strangely the past few days… strange for Sasuke, at least. He still hadn't accepted Naruto's offered help (that he was careful to not actually call 'help'), but up until yesterday he hadn't seemed all that irritated at Naruto, outside of being annoyed at having to continuously refuse apparently unwanted overtures. There was also a chance that it was a residual grudge from the teamwork building training Kakashi had given them, but that didn't explain Sasuke acting nice to him once or twice during their missions the previous day. And, so far as Naruto was concerned, it was pretty obvious that the teamwork building had been sabotaged by Kakashi, so it wasn't really his fault anyway.

_'The bastard's moody, that's all,'_ Naruto concluded unsatisfactorily.

Thankfully, Sakura wasn't far behind Sasuke – when was she ever? – so he didn't have to dwell on his dark haired friend's mood swings for long. What was even better was that she was willing – happy even – to talk to him about the mission and how cool it was that they were finally getting a chance to get out of the village for a mission. Sakura didn't think it was quite as exciting as he felt – or acted like he felt – it was, but then she'd taken a few trips out of the village with her family so to her leaving the village wasn't quite as big of a deal and she'd always been the more nervous member of Team Seven. She hadn't heard of the mining town they were heading to either, but her father knew a little about it. Some business associate of his had mentioned it in passing a few weeks earlier and he'd told her what he could remember while she packed up the last of her things.

Nothing her father had told her was especially interesting, most of it was covered in the scroll describing the mission that Naruto had read the night before, but he listened politely anyway while she recounted it to him.

Once Kakashi finally showed up, all three genin were ready to race at full speed towards their destination, but he made them take a slower pace, explaining that they would need their energy once they reached their destination. After all, guarding gold shipments from potential bandit attack would be hard work, it was best to conserve their strength while they had the chance, especially since they didn't have to be there until the next convoy of wagons transported a gold shipment in a few days.

Since they didn't have any civilians – like a certain annoying bridge builder, for instance – with them, their pace, though slower than impatient genin would have liked, seemed far faster than Naruto's memories of how trip to the Wave Country had gone. And without anyone to bother them, they all ('all' generally meaning everyone but Sasuke) chatted amiably and the journey was quite enjoyable.

When they stopped for the night, having covered about a third of the distance to the town, Kakashi gave each a chore and set them to it while he scouted the area. Naruto's clones collected firewood while he dug out the fire pit, Sasuke pitched the tents and stored their supplies, and Sakura found a fast moving stream they could drink from and even caught two fish for an addition to their dinner rations. By the time Kakashi returned, the genin had a nice fire going – thanks to a fire jutsu from Sasuke – and their fish were nearly done. He congratulated them on a job well done and the meal was enjoyed by all.

As they finished their meal, the genin were told to take an hour or so training by themselves – or with each other, if they wanted – and then return to their tents and get some sleep so they would be fresh and ready to go early in the morning. Sasuke quickly headed into the woods, leaving half of his fish behind to be quickly gobbled up by Naruto. Sakura stared after him for a moment and looked like she might follow, but instead went off by herself. Once the food was gone, Naruto was instantly following Sasuke's path.

He found the dark haired boy standing in front of a large ash tree, several kunai slashes already marking its trunk roughly half way up. He watched quietly as Sasuke ran at the tree, pushing his way up step by step and then marking his spot, a little higher than his previous best mark, as he flipped away from the trunk and landed almost back where he'd started. He looked up at his progress, cursed, and then started again.

After two more attempts he paused and glanced over his shoulder. "If you're here to gloat, I don't want to hear it."

"Why would I gloat?" Naruto asked as he stepped out from behind the tree he'd been hiding behind.

"I've seen you," Sasuke replied in an irritated voice. "You already know how to do this."

Naruto shrugged, "It's not such an amazing trick that I'd brag about it. It just takes practice and control."

"Yeah, I guess you and Sakura are pretty god damn smart, this isn't even a challenge for either of you. Good thing I'm on _your_ team so you two can cover up how pathetic I am!"

"What's Sakura-chan got to do with this?"

Sasuke scowled. "You both figured it out so easily…" his voice trailed off and he turned back to the tree. "I don't care though, I'll get it without you. I can't believe I almost took you up on your offers. I don't need you, either of you."

Naruto looked at Sasuke in exasperation and then shook his head. "How stupid are you?" he demanded. Sasuke rounded on him with rage in his eyes, but Naruto didn't care if he was trampling on the boy's pride. Sasuke needed it spelled out here and now. The things coming out of his mouth were already dangerously close to what he'd been saying when he went to Orochimaru. This was yet another way in which character traits seemed to have accelerated, but unlike Hinata and Sakura, this one wasn't going to be helpful. It had to be crushed, now.

"Sakura and I don't care about being better than you, dumbass! And we don't care about you being better than us, either. We just want to help you and we hope that you'll help us when we need it! I didn't kick your ass the other day to make myself look good or to show you up, I did it because it was the only way I could see to _help_ you! You're my friend, believe it or not, and I want to help you be the strongest ninja you can possibly be. All that stuff you said about killing your brother and rebuilding your clan back when we were first put on this team, I want to help you do all of it! I want to watch your back while you kill Itachi. I want to be there when you get married. I want to smoke cigars and laugh with you when your kids are born! If you ask me to teach you something or help you with something, I will. I might tease you a little – especially when you've been acting like a stuck up prick – but I won't think less of you for not knowing _everything_ or needing help learning something new. The _only_ way I'd ever think less of you is if you're so god damn weak and pathetic that you can't get over your own ego and get the help you need… because if you can't do that much, it'll prove that you're too stupid to be worth the work it takes to be your friend!"

Sasuke stared at him long and hard. The anger in his eyes was gone, replaced by something else that Naruto couldn't identify. Then he snorted and actually smiled a small, but genuine smile. "Do you really mean all of that?"

"I don't go back on my word."

Sasuke's grin grew a tiny bit larger. "You think you're going to _help_ me rebuild my clan?"

From the tone of the other boy's voice, Naruto suspected this was an attempt at a joke. Sakura would be horrified to see Sasuke being corrupted like this. "Maybe I'll jus cheer you on from another room… unless that would be too distracting. I'd hate to think I was doing anything that would be, uh, _detrimental_ to your performance."

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "No, I'm sure that will be _exactly_ what I want to be thinking about while I'm…" his voice trailed off and his cheeks flushed ever so slightly at the thought.

They were quiet for a moment and then Naruto asked, "So, do you want some pointers?"

"I'm not a little girl that needs you to hold my hand," Sasuke replied with a smirk.

Naruto laughed. "I thought it felt like someone was watching us." He glanced up at Sasuke's marks on the tree and then said, "I can't promise not to hold your hand, but if you let me help you, you'll get the hang of it a lot quicker. Believe it or not, your friends can actually help you get stronger."

Sasuke frowned, but Naruto couldn't tell if it was at the word 'friend' or at the still-foreign idea of getting help or maybe he was finding it odd to have been joking with Naruto a second ago.

"Alright," Sasuke said at last, "just don't forget: I don't swing that way."

Naruto's smile widened. "Then buddy, you'd better get yourself a girlfriend, I hear there's a whole underground group of male Uchihatards tha—"

"Uchihatards?"

Naruto scratched the back of his head. "Er, they're the… you know, girls… well, _people_, I guess, that follow you around and worship the ground you walk on."

"And you call them Uchihatards?"

Naruto found it difficult to believe that Sasuke had missed the snickers and whispers amongst the boys in their class whenever the kunoichi in training fought over who would sit next to him, or talk to him, or pass him a sheet of paper, but apparently even Sasuke wasn't always aware of everything around him. In a way, it was sort of funny that Uchiha Sasuke, the genius with the sad past who was fawned over so much by the village, had missed something that was so completely out in the open. As far as he knew most, if not all, of those who were considered to be Uchihatarded knew about the nickname that had been bestowed upon them.

"We've got to call them something, don't we?" he asked with a shrug. "'The Sasuke Fan Club' doesn't have as nice of a ring to it if you ask me." Sasuke still didn't look impressed, or pleased. "Kiba came up with it… I think," Naruto offered lamely, "blame him."

Sasuke stared at his blond teammate a moment longer before shaking his head. "Whatever. I don't care about those annoying pests."

"What about Sakura-chan?"

The question was phrased innocently enough, but Sasuke's face darkened instantly and one hand clenched into a fist. "What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

Naruto waved his hands placatingly. "Nothing, nothing… I just noticed that you two train together a lot and since she was one of the queen Uchihatards…"

"She's not like that anymore." Sasuke snapped far too quickly.

Naruto nodded. It took all of his willpower not to raise an eyebrow or drop a thinly veiled suggestion as to what Sasuke's defense of Sakura might mean. Instead he merely said, "Ah, well, that's good, because she could probably teach you this stuff better than I can. She has way better chakra control than either of us could ever hope to get." He waited a moment for a reply, but didn't get one so he wandered over to Sasuke's tree and looked up at it. "Wow, you've figured this out a lot faster than I thought you would."

Again Sasuke didn't respond.

Naruto glanced over at his future friend and decided to take a risk. They'd joked around a little, which was a good start, but if Sasuke still couldn't bring himself to accept Naruto's offer of help, then he really hadn't made any progress at all. "Well, I guess you didn't need my help after all. I'll see you back at camp, Sasuke."

"Wait," Sasuke called out through clenched teeth before Naruto had taken two steps, "can you show me how to do it better?"

Naruto didn't bother trying to keep the happy smile off of his face as he walked back to where his friend stood and spent the next ten minutes figuring out how Sasuke was doing it and giving him tips on how he could improve. By the time they headed back to camp, Sasuke could run a full fifteen steps more than he'd been able to do before and could also walk several steps up the tree as well. Naruto estimated that with another day or two of practice, Sasuke would have it perfected.

He could tell that his friend wasn't totally pleased about having to accept help from someone he no doubt considered to be inferior – both in terms of skill and potential – but the fact was that Sasuke was a smart guy. He would see the results from Naruto's help and quickly catch on that his teammates weren't just deadweight for him to carry, they could help him achieve his goals as well… or at least Naruto _hoped_ that was the lesson he would take from their little training session. Time would tell if this moment of camaraderie and friendship was just a one time thing while no one else was around or if it was the beginning of a real friendship.

On the way back to camp, he decided to test it out and tried striking up a conversation with Sasuke. They didn't talk about anything serious, just something funny from their missions. Really, it didn't matter what it was, only that Sasuke talked back – not a lot, of course, but enough to show that he wasn't just tolerating the conversation in hopes that Naruto would soon shut up. Sasuke was actually chuckling when they reached the camp and found Sakura and Kakashi cleaning up the site and preparing for bed.

Kakashi didn't seem to notice or care that the two were coming back together – and actually appearing to like each other – or that Sasuke looked like he'd just done 100 laps around Konoha on his hands. Sakura, on the other hand, tracked them with her eyes from the moment they entered camp until they all retreated into their tents for the evening with Kakashi in one tent and the three genin in the other.

ooo

The next day was nearly identical to the first. The team woke up, broke camp, continued on their journey for most of the day with only a few stops to eat or rest, and then made camp and trained a little before bed. Naruto again helped Sasuke – who actually seemed to welcome his help and his presence time around – though he was needed far less help than the first night. That, coupled with Sakura's seemingly ever-improving view of him and the fact that he'd managed to get his team on a difficult mission comparable to one they were supposed to have taken to the Wave Country, had Naruto in high spirits during their easy journey.

On the afternoon of the third day, they reached their destination. The change in the environment as they neared the mining town was as shocking as it was impossible to miss. Team Seven literally walked around a picturesque wooded hill and suddenly found themselves in the midst of a near-wasteland. In front of them three small mountains formed a semi circle around a small lake and what was probably once a grassy plain. Two of the three mountains had been striped of their surface plant life and topsoil and had long, deep groves winding up them – this, Naruto assumed, had something to do with the mining being done on them – the third was in the process of joining the other two as it had been cleared from the top to about a quarter of the way down. It actually took Naruto a moment to realize that he was looking at water and not more dirt when he glanced at the lake and the small stream that fed into it. The water had become a rusty-brown color instead of the usual blue with a sort of green tinge around the edges.

"What is this, sensei?" Sakura asked for all of them.

"The mining town Kogane," he replied calmly as if the devastated environment were perfectly normal. He pointed to the small cluster of brown houses that blended into the side of the hill so well the genin hadn't even noticed them. Sakura wondered aloud why anyone would live in such an ugly place. No one offered an answer.

Naruto's nose twitched as a foul, stale scent in the air hit him, probably from the polluted lake. "This place smells bad," he whispered, his good mood evaporating instantly.

"Let's go find the foreman," Kakashi suggested as he began walking towards the town, "he's the one we're supposed to report to."

Kogane looked ugly from afar, a dirty town at the base of a desolate strip of land, and the nearby lake smelled disgusting. Up close it was even worse. The houses did not appear to blend into the stripped hill naturally (though it was impossible to guess what their original color was), but their cracked, wooden walls and sheet metal roofs had been recolored thanks to a thick covering of dust and soot from years of mining. The water's stench only grew stronger as the genin team entered town and soon the noxious fumes choked every breath they took.

"This is already the worst mission ever," Naruto groaned, wishing he'd picked a boring C rank mission that would have taken his team somewhere pleasant. Sakura nodded in agreement.

The villagers were nearly as dirty as their town, which – given that most of them probably worked in the mine – made sense. They walked about as though dead tired, though they called out greetings to each other in the sort of jovial way that comes from working long hours together. The restaurants and bars seemed to be the most popular places in town. Each place Team Seven passed had small crowds of hungry miners either looking for food or looking to get drunk. A few men – and one burly woman – whistled at Sakura when they spotted her, causing her to take a small step closer to Sasuke as they walked by.

Sasuke didn't react one way or another to Sakura moving closer to him, he simply continued to slowly scan the area, his dark eyes flashing from side to side, catching every movement of every villager they came across. "These people don't act like they're being terrorized," he noted as they approached the shack designated as the "office" for the mine foreman.

Naruto hadn't noticed it until Sasuke pointed it out, but he quickly saw what his friend was talking about. "They aren't acting scared at all. They're just walking around like everything is normal."

"The attacks aren't all that frequent," Kakashi pointed out. "It could be that they either don't think it will keep happening or else only get scared when they are preparing to make another shipment."

Naruto doubted that Kakashi believed what he was saying. He was far to smart to dismiss such strange behavior. Had Kakashi read the _actual_ mission briefing, he would have been even more disturbed. These people should have been huddled in fear, watching any approaching group of strangers with apprehension and suspicion – not drunkenly whistling at a pretty girl and wandering around out in the open without a care in the world.

Something was definitely wrong.

They entered the foreman's office – which was just a dirty room full of digging equipment, a few maps, and a desk that had seen better days – and presented themselves to the man who had ordered the mission.

The foreman was a large, older man with a thick barrel chest. His loose fitting kimono was pulled out in places and hanging down over his hakama, both were brown though it was hard to tell if it was because they were dirty or if that was their actual color. He was looking over a map when they entered the room and didn't appear to notice them – despite Naruto clearing his throat twice and Kakashi saying "excuse me" – for nearly two full minutes.

When he finally looked up at them, they could see that his face sported a thin beard and the sort of splotchy tan that came from being sunburned and peeling several times recently. His dark hair was cut short and laid flat against his large head; it also looked like it hadn't been washed in a month.

"What do you want?" he demanded in a baritone voice.

"We're the ninja from Konoha," Kakashi said as calmly as if the man had greeted them politely.

The man's eyes narrowed as he looked down on Sakura, Sasuke, and especially the orange-clad Naruto. "I asked for _real_ ninja, these look like babies to me."

"They are definitely 'real' ninja," Kakashi replied quickly, no doubt hoping to cut off the fight that was likely to erupt given the scowls Sasuke and Naruto were sporting. "This is Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, and Uzumaki Naruto. I'm Hatake Kakashi."

The man clearly wasn't impressed. "Well, if you don't get the job done, I'll be demanding my money back and sending my business elsewhere from now on. Konohagakure's prices must be getting too expensive if _this_ is all I get for that much money."

"We get it, old man," Naruto growled, "you're not impressed. Why don't you stop complaining and tell us what you want us to do so we can get out of this stink hole?"

"Ignore him, sir," Sakura quickly said, putting her hand over Naruto's mouth before he could say anything else. "He's just tired from our long trip. You're town is very… um… _lovely_."

The foreman looked from Sakura to Naruto who was struggling to add another description to the town around her hand. Then he snorted and shook his head. "Baby ninja, what will they think of next? My name's Ichijiro Hanbei, you can call me Hanbei-sama."

"I'm going to call you Hanb—memph" Naruto managed to get out before Sakura's hand clamped over his mouth once more.

"We look forward to helping you, Hanbei-sama," the pink haired kunoichi said with as polite a bow as she could offer with her right hand still on Naruto's mouth.

"Huh, I'm _sure_," Hanbei grunted as he motioned for them to follow him out the door.

Hanbei led them through the town, telling them a little about the mining operation, pointing out areas of interest, and explaining the events surrounding the bandit attacks. The attacks had started several weeks ago, shortly after the gold vein was discovered. Much to Naruto's chagrin, he mentioned the deaths of the three miners from the original mission request that he'd had to erase to make sure it was an appropriate C rank mission for his team, but Kakashi didn't react to the news and even Sakura only made a small gasp of surprise.

Hanbei was convinced that the bandits were hiding in a series of caves on the other side of one of the mountains, but had no real evidence to back up this claim. "That's where I'd hide" was all he would say about it.

The next shipment of gold and iron was scheduled to go out the following day heading for a nearby town that specialized in refining and metal working. If the bandits continued to act as they had, the shipment would be attacked shortly after leaving town and all of the ore would be stolen. Then, they would either come into town and cause farther trouble or vanish to wherever they were hiding themselves.

"Why isn't anyone acting scared?" Sasuke asked as Hanbei led them into one of the larger bars that also had rooms for rent above it. The town rarely had visitors, the foreman explained, so the rooms were almost never used – not that this meant Team Seven wouldn't have to pay for their room, if anything, it ensured that they would.

Hanbei paused for a split second in mid stride as if caught off guard. "We're used to danger and death," he replied with a shrug, almost managing to cover his hesitation. "Mining isn't safe, bandits aren't that unusual, life goes on."

Naruto again wondered how it was that he'd never heard of this town. If bandits weren't unusual, surely they would have sent in mission requests on a regular basis, he should have seen something about it at some point. Of course, just because he read, approved, and assigned a mission didn't mean that he remembered all of the details for that mission, it was possible that he'd read the town name a few times and simply didn't remember. It was equally likely, a little voice told him, that this mission was more dangerous than even a B rank mission should have been and that after wiping out whatever unprepared team had drawn the mission originally the bandits had destroyed the town.

Maybe messing up the Wave Country mission wasn't such a bad thing after all. Perhaps by doing that – and making sure that Team Eight was able to complete it – he was going to be able to save even more people than he'd realized he could.

After showing them to their room, Hanbei left to go take care of some random mine business that he didn't elaborate on. Naruto and his teammates weren't exactly tired, but Kakashi urged them to spend what was left of the day resting and preparing themselves for tomorrow when they would be facing their first mission that was _supposed_ to be dangerous (unlike others that were made dangerous by Naruto's mistakes). He went over tactics with them, had them check their equipment, and made a rudimentary plan for defending a small group of wagons.

By the time he was finished one of his genin was looking nervous, another confident, and the third full of excitement that came from something other than his hyperactive nature. They were as ready as they could possibly be…

ooo

In the back of a cave, dug deep into the side of a mountain, a man sat quietly contemplating the fire that burned in the pit in front of him. Around him a dozen or more men leaned against the cave walls or sat in the dirt waiting for him to give an order or to accidentally reveal where he was keeping their money at which point they would have tried to kill him… and probably would have failed miserably. It wasn't a cold night and even in the dank cave the fires kept the air relatively warm, but a shiver ran through his body. Without looking up from the flames he smiled.

"You bring news?" he asked as he held on hand out, gently caressing the flames and watching as they danced and swirled around his hand. It was an action that was as much to remind the hired thugs surrounding him what he was capable of as it was to take pleasure in his ability. After a few seconds of playing he withdrew his hand from the fire and looked up at his guest.

Hanbei stepped into the well lit area and nodded hurriedly, his hands rubbing together nervously. "T-the ninja arrived today," he said quietly, his dark eyes darting about the cave trying to watch every member of the gang simultaneously. It was not unknown for even an unintentional insult to result in a swift execution. Once he'd sent a fellow miner to deliver a message instead of coming himself. The next morning, the man's head had been waiting for him on his doorstep. He'd delivered every message personally since then. "Th-they are only three children and one jounin."

The man near the fire frowned. "Children, you say?"

"Y-yes, Kamui-sama."

"I thought I told you to make sure that the request was graded B rank."

"I did it exactly like you told me to."

Kamui scowled. "Trash can screw up even the simplest of instructions. Konoha wouldn't send children on a B rank mission…" his hand slipped underneath his robe and came out with a wicked-looking curved knife. He rubbed his thumb against the blade, watching calmly as the skin parted under the smallest pressure from the edge and a thick stream of blood began running down his hand and onto the ground. "…unless they were exceptionally powerful." He pocketed the knife again, as Hanbei let out an audible sigh of relief. "For trash you did well, I suppose," Kamui told his guest. He looked down at his hand once more and smirked as the skin knit itself back together. "The plan will continue."

"Yes, of course, Kamui-sama," Hanbei said with another sigh of relief and a deep bow, not in the least bit insulted (or not insulted enough to throw his life away) at having been called trash, they were all used to it by now. "We will prepare to leave at seven in the morning."

The cloaked man finally looked up at his guest, his eyes flashed in the fire light, one eye was pale lavender the other a normal shade of green. "One last thing, trash. Did you get the names of your guests?"

Hanbei swallowed hard and then recited the names that he'd been sure to memorize, knowing this question would come and being even more aware of the penalty for being unable to answer. "Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Sasuke, Uzumaki Naruto, and Hatake Kakashi."

Kamui looked up sharply, "_Uchiha_ you say?"

Hanbei nodded, not enjoying being in the other man's presence for so long, especially when he was the one being observed by those strange eyes.

"What color were his eyes?"

"I-I don't recall, black, I think, or perhaps brown."

"Not red?"

"N-no, Kamui-sama. I would have noticed something like that."

"Maybe," conceded, "I suppose even _you _would have been able to spot something so obvious." Kamui smiled broadly. "No matter. Even if _it_ hasn't manifested, we may still be able to harvest what we want from him and if not, we'll just have to be satisfied with what we can get." He waved dismissively and two dirty, mean-looking men stepped from the shadows and led mine foreman away.

Kamui returned to watching the fire. "An Uchiha and the Copy-nin?" he told the flames as two more robed figures stepped out of the shadows behind him. "We landed a prize catch this time."

o

o

A/N: So, here's the beginning of the substitute mission. It'll take three chapters to deal with – and a good portion of that will be spent fighting – and then we'll be heading back to Konoha and starting on the events surrounding the Chuunin Exam.

The Hinata training at the beginning – especially with the Hiashi-Naruto clones cheering Hinata on – was pretty random. I'm not sure that I totally like that part after rereading it, but it seemed like a good idea in the beginning, so perhaps I just read it too many times and the humor faded… oh well, it's only a small part, so if it came across as forced you at least have plenty of other things to enjoy. There's one more small part with Hinata before the Chuunin Exam, but then she takes more of a back seat for a while.

The names Kamui and Hanbei come from the manga _The Legend of Kamui_ by Sanpei Shirato and the characters bear a little physical resemblance to their names' sakes. Two other characters in this arc will come from there as well. No real reason, I just happened to be reading that series while I was writing this arc and when I needed names, those popped into my head.

Hopefully Sasuke and Naruto's scene worked. Originally Naruto was more laid back and just sort of accepted Sasuke's irritation, but in reading through it, I didn't like that he was just letting Sasuke act like he had right before he left the village in canon so Naruto's whole 'I'm your friend' speech was added. This and some upcoming stuff is what all of Sasuke's angsty moodiness has been building towards, so it better have at least kind of worked or I'll have to come back and work on it… and I do so hate doing that.

Thanks for the read, next chapter will be up next Friday, please review.


	17. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

o

It was still dark outside when Naruto got up from the bedroll he'd been doing his best to sleep on. Sasuke and Sakura were still asleep and he did his best not to disturb them as he rose and headed for the door. Even after having had an evening to get used to it, Kogane was still a shit hole. It would have been nice if some god has sent a strong wind during the night to blow some of the stench away, but such was not the case. It was, however, a _quieter_ shit hole without all the miners staggering from bar to bar laughing and having a good time until they were too drunk to remain upright, but the quiet did little to improve his opinion of the place. About the only thing that would have eased his dislike of the place would be if he could have joined the men in a couple of rounds of stiff drinks.

At least there weren't any insects out yet. Really, there _should_ probably have been some, especially given what a warm night it was and the abundance of warm, drunk bodies so close to a standing body of water. No doubt the source of the stench made that water far less hospitable to insect larva than clean water would be. At least it was good for something.

_'Today's the day,'_ he thought with a sigh as sat down on the dusty front steps of the inn they'd slept at that night. _'Sakura and Sasuke will finally get to see some real action and prove what they can do so Kakashi will have a good reason for entering us in the Exam.'_

The idea that his team would probably be facing a real enemy later on that afternoon was simultaneously exciting and terrifying. He knew they could and would handle themselves just fine, but they were still so young and green. Of course, they'd been only a few weeks younger when they'd gone through it the first time, so it wasn't like this was anything new… it was just easier to feel excited about it when you were young and stupid and thought yourself invincible.

When the time came, he'd have to protect them, but at the same time _couldn't_ protect them if they were going to learn to stand on their own. Much as he might like to, he couldn't be constantly watching over Sakura and Sasuke, coddling them like Academy babies. They would have to face danger, maybe even get a little hurt, if they were going to get stronger. And he wanted them stronger.

Stronger, but not dead.

He'd keep an eye on them as best he could, but he'd also trust them to protect themselves. It was the only way. If he just had a shadow clone watching out for them, but not interfering unless it looked like they might be in way over their heads…

At the same time, if he got caught doing that, Sasuke would never forgive him for it. Sakura might think it odd and annoying, but Sasuke would see it as the worst kind of insult. All of the progress he'd made with his friend on their trip would be washed away in an instant if Sasuke thought Naruto was looking down on him like that.

Still, better to have a pissed of Sasuke than a dead one…

At least for now.

Naruto sighed again, wrinkling his nose at the smell that he was forced to inhale in the process, and looked up at the starlight sky. He hated thinking about it, but he wouldn't let Sasuke go to Orochimaru a second time. He would help his friend, he would love him, he would try to make him stronger, he would even die for him, but he would _not_ let him betray the village. He would kill Sasuke before he'd let that happen a second time. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that, but if it did, he would do what he had to.

Or at least that's what he told himself. Sometimes he was even completely convinced that he meant it. Probably he wouldn't know for sure unless he actually had to make the choice.

First things first, though. He had to make sure they all got through this stupid mission he'd so _wisely_ signed them up for. It shouldn't be that bad, one jounin shouldn't be too much trouble for Kakashi – or Naruto, if it came to it – and a band of bandits could be handled easily enough. The only real concern was the way the miners had been acting the previous day, completely out of character for terrorized citizens.

Naruto stretched and headed inside, wishing that one of the bars was still open and willing to sell to someone who was obviously a minor. Not that he could afford to have his wits dulled with the amount of alcohol he longed to use to drown the pressure that had been building on him, but a man could dream, couldn't he?

ooo

Sakura woke at sunrise feeling dirty, tired, and a little miserable. The room had been hot, smelly, and the noise from the bar below kept her up half the night. How those men expected to be able to work all day after such a night was beyond her. She didn't have the hangover that they no doubt had to deal with this morning and she was already wishing she could just roll over and go back to bed. What she really needed was a nice, warm bath to help relax her, but she'd found last night that the water from the tap was probably pumped directly from the lake as it had that same rust coloring.

Lamenting her team's poor luck in drawing such a horrible mission, Sakura calmly went about brushing her hair and preparing herself for the day. Even after camping with them on the trip, it was still sort of odd spending the night in a room full of boys – her mother probably would consider it slightly scandalous even though they were only thirteen and nothing had happened – but it really wasn't as bad as she'd thought it might be before their first night in the tent at the beginning of their journey. Naruto didn't try to grope her or sneak a peak at anything (not that she wore clothing that leant itself towards offering peaks), proving once again that he really was starting to grow up; and Sasuke, thankfully, didn't snore so he remained the perfect man by her estimation. 

In fact, not only was it not as bad as she'd thought it would be, it was actually pretty nice – aside from the room itself. Both Naruto and Sasuke had insisted that she take the bed – which ended up being lumpy and uncomfortable, but that wasn't their fault – while they slept on bed rolls on the dirty floor. They'd both respected her privacy when it came time to change into their evening clothing and now she found, as she looked about the room, that they had also risen before her, dressed, and let her sleep in a little.

Obviously Sasuke was having the sort of positive effect on Naruto that only someone as amazing as he could have.

Sakura quickly dressed and brushed her hair, trying to get it looking normal without using any of the gross water. Her efforts weren't entirely successful and she was left with several areas on her head that looked oddly lumpy. She considered using just a little bit of the water for the trouble spots, but after turning on the faucet and watching the reddish-brown sludge roll out and down the drain, she decided that her hair would have to be good enough as it was.

Thankfully, brushing one's teeth didn't require water so she didn't have to spend all day worrying about Sasuke smelling her morning breath.

Downstairs she found Naruto, Sasuke, and Kakashi looking at a small map which Kakashi was tracing a line along with his finger.

"Ah, Sakura-chan, good morning!" Naruto called out when he spotted her.

Sasuke glanced in her direction, said nothing, and then went back to looking at the map while Kakashi seemed to smile at her and beckoned her to join them.

"As I was telling Naruto and Sasuke, this is the area that we're probably going to be attacked at," Kakashi explained, pointing to a spot on the map where a mountainous region was indicated. "These hills will force us to take this path and will offer cover for enemies to attack from above. According to the mission briefing, it should just be a ragtag group of bandits, but… it's not unheard of for missing nin to act as bandits."

"So, if that's the case, you want us to get up there first and take them out?" Naruto asked eagerly.

Kakashi looked at the blond and shook his head. "No, if that's the case, I want _you_ to stay with the wagon while _I_ take them out."

"Bor-ing," Naruto sighed. A part of Sakura agreed with him, but a larger part of her thought that the idea of taking on other ninja on her first mission away from the village was an unsettling one. She had no doubt it would happen eventually, it had to if her team continued growing in their abilities and rank… and Sasuke would, of course, be amazing when the time came… but for the moment she preferred the idea of getting to that point _gradually_.

Kakashi glared at the blond, but seemed more amused than actually angry. "Get over it." He traced a line on the map once more for Sakura's benefit and said, "This is the caravan's route. Aside from this spot in the mountains, there's also a chance of ambush here once we've entered the forest." He slid his finger across a green portion of the map, "While we're in the woods, three of us will be in the trees at all times, keeping a lookout for bandits, the fourth will remain be in the middle of the caravan so he or she can easily reach any trouble spots along the line. We'll rotate positions every half hour. Hanbei-_sama_ says the journey takes until just after sunset and we'll have to eat as we walk, so make sure you pack your rations…" Naruto gave an exaggerated groan that Sakura had to agree with, the field rations were terrible, "…somewhere accessible. Everyone got it? Good. The wagons are leaving at seven, don't be late."

ooo

"Yo, Kamui-sempai, is it time yet?" an overly energetic voice called out, echoing through the cave and off the rock formations surrounding it.

Kamui stood at the mouth of the cave, his eyes closed and head tilted towards the rising sun, blocking out all sensations except the warmth of the new day on his face. He had been standing there for hours, ignoring the stench of the nearby village, ignoring the chill of the early morning air, ignoring the calls of the birds as they hunted for food to bring to their hatchlings, ignoring everything but himself – the only important thing in the mountains as far as he was concerned. But now he couldn't ignore the voice, not because he lacked focus or desire, but because Fudo would just keep yelling louder and louder until he responded and it might be slightly problematic if they were overheard.

Instead of just yelling, Fudo also reached out and touched Kamui's arm, hoping to get his attention that way as well. "YO, KAMUI-sempai!" he yelled again even though they were standing right next to each other. "IS IT—ouch!!" He jerked his hand back quickly and blew on it. "Yo, that wasn't nice, sempai, you could hurt someone like that!"

"Fudo, if you say one more word, I'll kill you where you stand," Kamui told him calmly.

Fudo was smart enough to shut his mouth instantly, though Kamui supposed it was more likely that the larger man simply was satisfied with being acknowledged and didn't need to keep yelling now that he was certain he could be heard. Truth be told, it would be a difficult thing to kill Fudo; difficult and wasteful. The world was overrun with trash as it was; it would be a shame to destroy someone special.

"Yo, sempai, what time should we be getting into position?" Fudo asked, having managed to hold his tongue for only a few seconds.

Kamui opened his eyes and glared at his companion. Fudo's cloaked body looked strangely deformed, parts were lumpy and even pointed where no such shape should exist on a man, but underneath the concealing clothing, Kamui knew, was the makings of a truly special – if incredibly annoying – human. Very few ninja could undergo what he had and survive. He'd been special when they met three years earlier and was even more so now. Kamui knew that a time might come when he would have to rid himself of his disciple, perhaps even have to kill him and reclaim the gifts he'd bestowed upon the man, but for the time being he was as useful as he was special… which was why he was allowed to live despite being so irritating.

"We'll wait and see what we're dealing with before making our move. Let the trash test out our prey first and see if any of them besides the Copy-nin will have anything useful for us," Kamui replied as he turned and headed towards the cave. "I've heard rumors that the Uchiha clan was wiped out, if this boy is really one of them, there's no telling if he'll actually have the Sharingan or even be capable of it. It would be a shame to take the time transplanting his eyes only to find out that they're worthless."

"Sem-pai," Fudo whined, "if you let those guys have first crack at the ninja, there might not be anything left for me to play with! Yo, let me go with them! I'll give those four a real test!"

The veins around Kamui's one pale eye bulged as he activated its abilities. "If you'd prefer, I could incapacitate you, _again_, until after the fighting is done. It would make you as worthless as the rest of the trash, but at least you'd be silent for once."

Fudo swallowed hard and his face paled as he put a little more room between himself and his leader. "Yo, Kamui-sempai, you don't need to do that! I'll follow the plan!" He raised his hands pleadingly, "Please, I'd go crazy if I didn't get a chance to fight them!" A thin white object shot out of the sleeve of his cloak, slicing across Kamui's cheek and then continuing on until it struck a large rock and buried itself a full six centimeters into it.

Fudo's eyes widened in horror. "Yo, shit, sempai, I didn't mean it, I swear!" he cried. "I can't control it very well when I get upset!"

The Byakugan relaxed and Kamui almost smiled as he reached up and wiped the blood from his cheek, revealing that the wound had already healed. "If you can't control that ability, maybe you don't deserve to have it. I'm sure there are other, more worthy, candidates out there who would _kill_ to have a kekkei genkai like that one." Fudo began to apologize again, but was silenced by a glare from the smaller man. "No one ever said that these abilities would be easy to control, but if we want to be more special than even the most special of ninja in this world, we must control them. Now go and tell that trash to attack the caravan as planned. You, Sayaka, and I shall watch from the hills and see what we can gleam from the slaughter."

"Of course, Kamui-sempai!" Fudo quickly agreed with a polite bow and then ran ahead to alert the bandits they had hired that they were about to earn their money.

Kamui turned his back to the cave and let the sun warm his face once more, chuckling to himself as he closed his eyes. Fudo was always polite when he was afraid, unfortunately the man's mind didn't hold onto fear – or much of anything – for very long. He would return to his usual annoying self soon, but for the moment he was the perfect underling…

And perhaps by the end of the day, he'd be made even more perfect. Perhaps they'd all take one step closer to perfection.

ooo

Naruto was certain that something about the whole mission stunk – and it wasn't just the village they'd stayed in the night before… nor was it the miners they were walking with, though they reeked of booze, polluted water, and sweat. Part of it was what Sasuke had noticed as they first walked through town, Kogane's villagers didn't act like terrorized citizens in the slightest, not even as they were walking towards a potential ambush. Even beyond that something wasn't right. Naruto knew it was there, he just didn't know what it was that he knew or why. It was like a tickling sensation at the back of his head. Something his brain had recognized but couldn't put into words or pictures.

It was just… wrong.

"Leave it to me to pick another mission that was more than it was supposed to be," he grumbled as he studied the wind-worn rocky outcroppings around them while the wagons slowly made their way through the foothills.

"What did you say?" Sakura asked.

"Uh, nothing," he said with a quick grin. "Just wishing we had something to look at besides rocks and dirt."

He, Sakura, and Sasuke were walking in between the two wagons, which were being pulled by a combination of horse and man power. The wagons were moving just fast enough to kick up a steady stream of dust for the genin to choke on and to help mask the occasional present the horses left behind. They were only a short ways into their journey and already they'd nearly stepped in manure on two separate occasions.

Naruto had offered to create some clones to help with the job of pulling the wagons, but Hanbei had told him he didn't want anyone that couldn't be trusted near the gold. Naruto had bristled at the insinuation that he would steal from his employer, but had let it go with a shrug, if the man wanted his people worn out from pulling some stupid wagons who was he to argue? 

Kakashi was usually in the front of the small procession, no doubt using his expert nose and eyes to search for traps before they reached them. Occasionally he would drop back with his students to check in with them – rather unnecessarily in Naruto's opinion since they were obviously being sheltered by their jounin who, in his defense, didn't really know that they were capable of tangling with missing-nin such as the Devil of the Mist, Momochi Zabuza. Of course, Naruto had been basically planning on doing the same thing once the action started, but he at least intended to be more subtle about it. After checking in with them Kakashi would drop to the back of the caravan and make sure that they weren't being followed before returning to the front again. 

Naruto found Kakashi's behavior oddly out of character. He normally was one to let his students sink or swim (being there to bail them out… eventually… if they needed it, of course) on their own. For him to be taking so much of the responsibility on his own shoulders, he must have guessed that the mission was more than what it appeared. Given that he had no way of knowing that it had been originally labeled as a B rank mission, this was probably due to what Sasuke had noticed about the villagers or something even deeper that Kakashi had found for himself.

Whatever the reason – and even if it made Naruto a hypocrite to think such things – he found it extremely annoying. 

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of something moving quickly through the air. Even distracted as he was with problems involving the space-time continuum and the semi-preservation of the timeline – problems he'd never dreamed he'd ever have to think about – instinct already had him moving.

It also already had Sasuke moving.

"Look out!" the dark haired boy yelled as he grabbed Sakura and tried to get a hand on Naruto as well to pull them back out of harms way. 

Naruto had already stepped to the side as an arrow thudded into the ground close to where his feet had been a second earlier. Whoever shot it either wasn't a very good aim or was trying not to hit him. It only took him a second to find the group that had fired on them, they were positioned at the top of a large, rocky hill, taking cover amongst the boulders. A shout from behind alerted him to the presence of still more enemies on the other side of the valley they were walking through.

"Any ideas?" Naruto asked Sasuke and Sakura as they back up against him.

"Sensei will be here in a second, I'm sure," Sakura said as she stared up at the dirty, rag covered men glaring down at them. "He'll tell us what to do."

Naruto brought his fingers together and said, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu." Two clones popped into existence next to him. One laced his fingers together as Naruto mimicked him, and the other jumped onto their hands and was thrown several meters into the air. At the height of his ascent, he brought his hands together and vanished in a puff of smoke.

Naruto blinked as the memory hit him and shook his head, "There are more up front, Kakashi-sensei isn't going to be here for a little while."

"We don't need him to deal with these guys anyway," Sasuke growled, drawing a kunai.

Naruto chuckled and shook his head. "You always were a showoff."

Sasuke glanced over his shoulder at the blond and grinned wickedly. "Scared?"

Naruto returned the grin. Sasuke was right, they wouldn't need Kakashi's help in dealing with some bandits. "Just try to keep up, Showoff."

Sasuke drew another kunai and took a deep breath. "You take the guys on your side. Sakura, you stay here and guard the caravan. _When_ Naruto gets in trouble, back him up. I'll take care of the rest."

If Sakura had a problem with the plan – and Naruto had little doubt that she probably had several problems with the plan since she normally didn't appreciate being left behind even in the early days – she didn't have time to voice her objection. Sasuke had no sooner finished giving the orders than he and Naruto were racing up the sides of the valley, charging the bandits who were so surprised by the two genins' actions that it took them a few precious seconds to realize they needed to start shooting again.

Before Naruto was even half way up the hill he'd been joined by roughly three dozen clones. The sudden appearance of the small army was enough to make the bandits turn and begin to flee. Unfortunately for them, Naruto wasn't going to be satisfied with just running them off.

The slowest of them were caught from behind and mobbed by numbers, going down under a swarm of punching and kicking Narutos. The others, seeing and hearing their comrades' cries of alarm, turned and attempted to go down fighting even if it was hopeless. 

Aside from their crossbows, they were only armed with rusting knives and hatchets, not the sort of weapons one would expect from a group that had been terrorizing a gold mine for several weeks. Their crossbows worked well from a distance, but up close could only be used once before being discarded since they took too long to reload. A few clones were destroyed by arrows, but more replaced them. From there the battle descended into a melee.

Naruto himself was amongst the mob of fighting, not content to sit back and let his clones have all the fun. He made quick work of any and all bandits he could get his hands on, but the fight was practically over before it had even started. Whoever they were, these bandits were not the sort of people who could go head to head with a ninja, not even an inexperienced ninja. To have a ninja of his level fighting them was like using Gamabunta's sword to swat a fly.

As his clones finished their work and then disappeared into small clouds of smoke he turned and peered across the valley. There was Sasuke sitting on top of a pile of bodies looking about as smug as he possibly could. Naruto smirked at him, though his mirth didn't extend below his face. He couldn't help but feel a tug of remorse at the memories of a different – sort of – Sasuke acting just like this… and eventually throwing everything away for a shot at revenge.

As the two boys looked at each other from across the ravine, a shadow appeared behind Sasuke. Naruto started to call out a warning as the shadow raised its weapon, but before he could, something metallic flashed through the air and imbedded itself into the bandit's thigh. The man cried out in pain and then dropped like a rag doll as Sasuke's fist connected with the side of his head.

It took Naruto a moment to realize exactly what had happened, but then he saw Sakura standing near the wagons, her arm still extended from her throw. This time his smile was genuine.

His friends were growing up fast.

ooo

On a nearby hilltop, hidden amongst a cluster of rocks, three cloaked forms watched the battle closely… at least initially.

Fudo only managed to watch the first few minutes before growing bored and becoming distracted by some sparrows that were playing in a small pond nestled amongst the boulders. After several minutes of watching them hop in and out of the water, occasionally jumping at each other as part of some indecipherable game, he turned back to the other two cloaked forms and sighed. "Yo, did he use anything good?"

Kamui didn't bother looking back at the younger man. "No, idiot, it would be wasted on trash like them. They were even weaker and less effective than I thought they would be."

Next to him a black haired woman with a sharp, angular face and full, pouty red lips turned away from the battle and asked, "Does he have it?"

Kamui frowned and ran a scared hand through his thick, dark hair. "Perhaps, Sayaka, perhaps not. I had hoped he'd have to use it to deal with our former employees, but it looks like they were all talk and no bite. It seems we won't know for sure until we give him a _real_ test."

Sayaka returned to watching the end of the battle as the blond and the Uchiha finished off the last of the pitiful band of mercenaries that had been sent to test them. "Do all Uchiha have it? Or could he just be Uchiha in name, but not in blood?"

Kamui shrugged. "I doubt that, but it is possible. Regardless, we'll find out soon."

"If it hasn't manifested, what will we do?"

This time Kamui smiled evilly. "We'll capture him and see if we can help it along, but only for a little while. If we don't see results out of him in the first week or so, we'll kill him. There's no reason to wait beyond that. We'll have Copy Ninja Kakashi's. That will be enough. I only need one"

Sayaka's green eyes flashed dangerously as she snorted in annoyance, a small dust cloud swirled around her feet. "Just as I though, you plan on adding it to _your_ collection even though you already have the Byakugan. What about us?"

"There are more abilities out there, be patient. With a Sharingan and a Byakugan, there won't be a ninja alive that can stand up to me. I'll get you all the abilities you want."

She smiled at him, her red lips looking so unnatural against her pale skin. "What if I want a Sharingan?"

Kamui grinned and turned his eyes back to the battle as Kakashi arrived to check on his charges. "Then you'll either have to find another Uchiha, or try to take mine. I'd advise the former, it would be a shame to rob this trash-filled world of one of its few jewels." He stretched casually, careful not to put himself in a spot where he could be spotted by any of the ninja below, and waved for his companions to follow him. "This way, we'll be waiting for them as they enter the forest."

"Won't the Copy Ninja be expecting something as obvious as that?" Sayaka asked.

"Whether he expects it or not is irrelevant," Kamui replied as he began walking in the direction he'd indicated, "by the end of the day, I'll have his eye as well as any abilities those little brats might have."

ooo

Kakashi arrived just as Naruto and Sasuke were rejoining Sakura near the wagon. She was trying to help the miners calm one of the horses that was still upset by the sudden commotion. Apparently there had been more bandits near the front of the caravan than what had attacked the genin. He was pleased to see that his students had more than handled themselves in their first live combat experience.

"What did you expect, sensei?" Naruto asked with a large smile as he put his hands behind his head and added a little skip to his step.

"Well, I thought there was about a fifty-fifty chance that you'd bite off more than you could chew and get yourself killed," Kakashi replied evenly, "though I thought Sasuke and Sakura would be alright."

"That's harsh, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto whined feeling genuinely indignant. Often times he would pout or take offense only because he knew that his younger self would have, but it seemed that the longer he was in the past, the more natural and unforced his responses were becoming. It was almost as if he actually was _becoming_ his younger self… with a considerably larger jutsu repertoire and foreknowledge of some major future events that might or might not happen.

"You were worried about us," Sasuke pointed out before Kakashi could reply to Naruto's pitiful whining. "You've been babysitting us since we reached the village."

Naruto couldn't help but stare openly at his friend. There were times when he forgot that Sasuke wasn't just considered a genius because he was a quick study when it came to ninjutsu and taijutsu or because he happened to have a lot more chakra than a normal genin should. Sasuke was actually extremely observant, even without the Sharingan to instantly memorize images and movements. 

"I wouldn't call it _babysitting_…" Kakashi replied with a grimace, rubbing the back of his neck. "I was just making sure you three could handle this mis—"

"That's not true, sensei," Sakura interrupted. "You've been watching us and checking up on us a lot more than you normally do. It's like you're expecting something to go wrong."

This time Naruto couldn't help but smile a little. It wasn't so long ago that Sakura would have been so focused on Sasuke that she would have missed something like this or at least it would have been surprising if she _hadn't _missed something like this. However, either through her training with Sasuke or just from the fact that she was growing into a good ninja at a fairly quick pace, Sakura was clearly not the Uchihatard she'd once been. It was just one more instance where she was already becoming the woman he'd known her as in the future.

Belatedly Naruto noticed that with his two friends pointing out Kakashi's behavior while he just smiled at them he was looking pretty unobservant. "Uh, yeah, I noticed that too," he threw in lamely, "you usually just let us figure things out on our own a little, but today you've been checking on us a lot and you haven't even been reading your book."

Kakashi looked a little chagrinned, but Naruto could see in his eye and the way he stood slightly straighter that he was actually quit proud of his students for having seen through him. "Perhaps," he conceded, "I've been feeling a bit more nervous about this mission than I normally would and have been trying to make sure you three didn't encounter anything that was too out of your league before you were ready for it."

"What do you mean?" Sakura asked, her green eyes opening wide at the thought that there might be something in the whole world – let alone on the particular mission they'd been assigned – that could make her jounin-sensei feel nervous.

"I'm not quite sure," Kakashi replied, "but there's something not right about what's going on here."

"You mean that stuff Sasuke was talking about? About the villagers not being scared?" Naruto asked.

"Partly, but it's more than just that…" Kakashi's voice trailed off and then he gave himself a little shake, scratched at the back of his head and chuckled. "Don't worry about it; I'm sure it's nothing. With me around you three should be fine no matter what."

The three genin weren't exactly encouraged by this declaration, but he apparently had said as much as he was going to because a moment later he had instructed them to begin making rounds along the length of the caravan (which he would also be doing) and then returned to the front with the vague comment that he had something he needed to ask Hanbei about.

The next two hours passed slowly for everyone. Naruto wasn't sure if Sakura or Sasuke were excited about being 'allowed' to take on more responsibility and make rounds along the caravan, but it seemed like busy work to him. It also made it more difficult for him to keep an eye on his two friends in case they ran into the jounin level ninja that the original mission scroll had mentioned.

When at long last they saw the edge of the forest up ahead, Naruto was ready to weep with joy. The wagons kicked up a seemingly endless supply of dust as they made their way through the mountainous area and many of the rocks were loose, causing more than a few unpleasant slips and stumbles. On top of that, Hanbei had decided that, given the ambushed they'd gone through, they should take a short break once they'd entered the shade of the trees (after Kakashi had checked for traps and ambushes, of course) so they could water and feed the horses. Naruto had far more endurance than almost anyone else he knew, but after all the walking, fighting, and inhaling of dust, he was more than ready for a break.

"We'll stop here," Hanbei's deep voice finally bellowed out from the front of the line as they entered the shade of the forest. "There's a stream just a short walk to the east, unhitch the horses and let them have a drink. The rest of you, do what you want, but don't forget that if you wander off, we'll leave without you… and if you aren't with us when we arrive, you don't get paid."

Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke followed the miners with the horses to the stream and drank deeply from the first source of clean water they'd seen in two days. After that they quickly returned to the wagons so there was no chance of being left. Apparently the other miners weren't too concerned about Hanbei's promise of leaving them, because no one had stayed behind with the wagons except Kakashi, who was standing on a tree branch in a spot where he could see the entire caravan. The three genin sat down at the base of the tree and waited for the miners return.

After several minutes, Naruto looked around and frowned. "Why would they just leave all this gold sitting here for so long if they were so worried about someone stealing it that they wouldn't even let me help pull the wagons?"

"Maybe they think we took care of all the bandits, so there's no need for them to worry about it getting stolen anymore," Sakura suggested.

"Yeah, but one of _us_ could still take some. They were worried about it before…" His eyes snapped wide open, "Shit!" In an instant he was on his feet and running towards the nearest wagon, a bewildered Sakura and Sasuke close behind. Naruto grabbed the tarp covering the wagon's load, pulled it back, and groaned at the sight.

"These are just rocks!" Sakura exclaimed.

"This was a trap," Sasuke whispered as realization struck.

Naruto's fist hit the wagon hard enough to splinter wood. "How unlucky can one team be?" he grumbled under his breath.

Kakashi landed next to them and took in the sight in an instant.

"Should we go get Hanbei and the others?" Sasuke asked.

"They'll be gone by now," Kakashi replied with a shake of his head. "We'll have to deal with them later; we have another problem right now." He nodded back towards the edge of the forest where three cloaked figures were standing.

Naruto took an involuntary step back. It was impossible for _them_ to be here, they shouldn't have been active for almost three more years! He couldn't possibly have done anything to change that, no matter how screwed up he'd accidentally made things by not acting the way he originally had. They were supposed to be out gathering funds and recruiting members, not chasing him, not yet.

"Akatsuki," he whispered as his hands balled into fists. If they were here, for whatever reason, then he was just going to have to cut their numbers down by three. He couldn't afford to sit back and play the dumb genin on this one. Kakashi wouldn't stand a chance against three of them, not yet anyway, and Sakura and Sasuke still had a few years before they could think about taking one on. He hadn't been sure about when he would let Kakashi know who and what he was, but obviously the time for lies and stealth had come to an end.

He brought his hands together, ready to fill the forest with clones, grab his friends, and get them to safety, but before he could, Kakashi's hand came to a rest on his shoulder.

"Let's see what they want first," the jounin suggested far more cheerfully than seemed appropriate given the situation. He calmly removed his backpack, however and motioned for the three genin to do the same. They quickly complied though Naruto couldn't leave Kakashi in the dark about what they were dealing with.

"Sensei, these guys, they're…"

"Don't worry," Kakashi told him in a strangely soothing voice, "it will be fine. I'll protect you guys, even if it kills me. I don't let my comrades die." 

"Yeah, but…"

"But whose going to protect you, sensei?" Sasuke finished.

"No one," one of the cloaked figures answered with a chuckle as the three drew closer to Team Seven. With his attention back on them, Naruto actually breathed a sigh of relief. The cloaks these three wore were different from those that Akatsuki sported; these were nothing more than large, brown traveling cloaks.

"Who are you?" Kakashi asked as he let his backpack slip from his shoulders.

"I doubt you've heard of us, Sharingan Kakashi," the first replied as he pulled the hood of the cloak back revealing the youthful-looking face of a man who was grinning at them like a cat peering down at a trapped mouse. One of his eyes was covered by a large, black eye patch. "We're not apart of any of the villages anymore. We're collectors."

Naruto blinked in confusion and relief. "So you're just missing-nin?"

The man snorted. "We aren't _missing_. A missing ninja has abandoned his village, we resigned intentionally so we could become more than what we were."

Sakura glanced at her teammates and then at the trio in front of them. "That still sounds like missing-nin to me."

The man's grin faded into a scowl. "We aren't ninja anymore," he told her. "We're simply collectors. We left the ninja world and the mountains of trash like you that populates and pollutes it."

"You haven't answered my question," Kakashi pointed out, "who are you?"

"Does it make a difference?"

"Yes. I usually like to add names to the reports I have to fill out after missions. Plus, if there's a bounty on your head, my team gets paid a little more when your remains are returned to your home villages."

The man bowed his head. "If you want to know that name of those who are going to kill you and add your powers to our own, so be it. My name is Kamui."

The cloaked figure to Kamui's right pulled back her hood, revealing herself to be a tall, stern looking woman with long dark hair that was pulled back in a loose ponytail. "Sayaka."

The one to the left of Kamui did not remove his cloak, but gave them a friendly wave as he said in a cheerful voice, "Yo, I'm Fudo!"

"Should I bother asking what you want with us, or does it not matter at this point?" Kakashi asked, his hand reaching up for his hitai-ate.

"Like I said, we're collectors," Kamui replied as if that explained everything.

"Collectors of what?" Sakura asked suspiciously.

Kamui flipped his eye patch up, revealing the pale, nearly white eye beneath.

Naruto recognized it instantly. "That's a Hyuuga's eye!"

"No," Kamui said with a shake of his head, "it _was_ a Hyuuga's eye. It took forev—" His sentence was cut short as a kunai buried into his throat, drowning his final words in a gurgle of blood.

Kakashi, Sakura, and Sasuke turned as one to stare at Naruto, whose right hand was still outstretched from the throw. 

"Naruto," Sakura gasped, "what did you…"

"He deserved it!" Naruto snapped. "Not many Hyuuga's from the Main Family go out on missions too far from the village and Branch members have a seal that makes their Byakugan go dormant when they die. How many people do you think he killed just so he could get his hands on that one working Byakugan?"

A strange slurping sound drew their attention back to their three enemies as Kamui pulled the blade from his throat and tossed it aside while his throat knit itself back together. "Dozens," he replied with a smile at their shocked expressions.

Naruto's mouth fell open. "Y-You're a Jinchuuriki!"

Kamui looked confused for a moment and then shrugged. "I don't know what you're talking about; I'm not a host to anything by my own desires. Healing is my own special ability. My family worked as medical ninja for generations. Eventually we developed a way to heal ourselves without using seals or any sort of normal jutsu and that, apparently became such a part of our clan that the ability worked its way into our blood. Now we don't even have to think about it anymore, we just heal… or at least, _I_ do as I'm the only one left."

"You three step back," Kakashi said quickly moving to put himself between his team and the Collectors, "I'll handle this."

"But…" Sakura started to protest.

"They aren't a bunch of starving men with barely functional weapons," Kakashi pointed out, "these three are on a completely different level from anything you've seen before! Stay out of the way."

"That's fine," Kamui grinned, "we're here for your ability anyway, unless the Uchiha has manifested already. Regardless, you're our target, first and foremost. Given how nervous you are, I doubt these children have much to offer us, trash like them… with the possible exception of the Uchiha, of course… could run back to their village for all we care."

Kakashi pulled his hitai-ate up, revealing his Sharingan. "Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, if you see a chance, make a break for it. Don't go back to Kogane, go straight to Konoha."

"We aren't leaving you, sensei," Naruto growled, reaching for another kunai. He was distinctly aware of the way Sasuke was staring at Kakashi, a look of disbelief on his face. It took Naruto a moment to remember that this was the first time Sasuke had seen Kakashi's Sharingan and he could only imagine what sort of questions were galloping through the Uchiha's mind.

"I can't deal with all three of them and watch over you," Kakashi shouted, his raised voice alerting the three genin to the fact that he was more worried about the battle than he was trying to let on.

"You can't deal with the three of us, period." Kumai informed him as he darted forward with surprising speed.

Kumai's arm shot forward, a curved blade clenched in his first, but Kakashi ducked under the attack, sweeping out his leg and catching the ninja off guard. Kumai somersaulted once and rolled smoothly to his feet, turning just as Kakashi's hand latched onto his forearm.

The Leaf ninja gripped his opponent's arm tightly and pivoted on his left foot, preparing to throw the man, but before he could complete the motion he released his hold and pulled his hand away, a look of shock on his face.

"Forgive me, but this is the first time I've gotten to use this ability in a real fight and I can't resist the urge to make a terrible pun," Kumai said with an apologetic smile as he watched Kakashi rip the smoldering remains of the fingerless glove off his right hand and throw it away. "Are you feeling the _heat_ yet, Kakashi-san?"

"Yo, Kumai-sempai, are we going to get to do anything or do we just have to watch you play around?" the large cloaked man, Fudo, whined, earning himself a smack to the back of the head from the woman standing next to him.

Kumai rolled his eyes, his smile vanishing. "Do what you will, just don't kill the Uchiha… and if the other two show themselves to be more than common trash, make sure you save an useful pieces of them as well."

"Alright!" Fudo cheered, pumping his fist as something white shot from his sleeve.

Out of the corner of his eye Naruto saw Sakura's right shoulder jerk as if it had been struck. She glanced down at it in surprise, and then her whole face twisted as a wave of pain washed over her. She dropped to her knees, clutching her shoulder, as blood seeped between her fingers and flowed like a small stream down her hand. Sasuke was kneeling next to her in an instant, trying to both check on her and keep his eye on her attacker at the same time.

"Whoa, sorry about that," Fudo said sheepishly as he pulled back the hood of his cloak, "I have trouble controlling that sometimes."

Naruto's eyes widened. In a few ways, Fudo's face looked like any other man's. His dark hair was long and unkempt and his jaw line showing just a hint of stubble and his chin sporting the sort of awkward goatee that one can only grow when they finally hit the age where they can actually grow facial hair (Naruto had never progressed beyond that point). His green eyes peered out at them from under a heavy brow and his large nose was a touch on the flat side. But other than those things, he was unlike any person Naruto had ever seen.

Just above his left eyebrow white bone had pushed through his skin, not forming into a horn or anything spectacular, but simply looking like his body had decided that he should have an extra couple of centimeters of bone right there. Something similar had happened to his jaw, just under his left ear as the bone had pushed back until it was past his earlobe. Naruto could only guess what the other bulges underneath his cloak were due to.

Tearing his eyes away from the strange man in front of him, Naruto looked down at Sakura. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"I… I don't know what happened," she whispered back through clenched teeth, her eyes squeezed shut against the pain. "Something just went right through me… I didn't even feel it until I was already bleeding."

Naruto traced a line from where she had been standing back towards some nearby trees. There, buried in a tree trunk, was what looked like a thin white stick with a sort of flat, fat end at its tip.

It looked just like a bone.

Naruto frowned, trying to think of where he'd seen something like this before. A second later, the answer hit him. Orochimaru had a disciple that could use his bones as weapons; he'd attacked just as Naruto had caught up with Sasuke when he left the village. Kini-something, or was it Kimi… Naruto couldn't remember, it didn't matter anyway.

"Sasuke, take care of Sakura-chan," he said as he stepped forward. He glanced over his shoulder at them and grinned. "I can handle this guy; you just make sure she's safe. Got it, Showoff?"

Sasuke stood, a kunai in each hand, and squared himself with the two collectors and shook his head. "Math never was one of your strong subjects, was it dobe? There're two of them."

Naruto smiled. "I know." His fingers came together and suddenly the forest was flooded with Narutos, some on the ground, some standing on tree branches, and others hanging from beneath those same branches. Naruto pointed at Fudo and Sayaka. "Finish them quick."

The Naruto army gave a cheer of delight and descended upon the two ninja like a swarm of locust. Before any of them even came close to laying a finger on the two, Sayaka brought her hands together, formed a single seal, and a small cyclone erupted around her. This new development caught Naruto's clones off guard, most of them having leapt at her, leaving them completely defenseless to the sudden gust of wind that slammed into them.

The second the first clone was destroyed, Naruto knew what he was facing and instantly put himself between Sasuke, Sakura and the oncoming storm. His hands flashed through the necessary seals and then slammed into the ground as slab of stone jumped out of the forest floor in front of them. The shield would have protected them from the worst of it, despite the fact that the blast of wind was expanding and couldn't be stopped by a single wall of stone, but unfortunately he wasn't prepared for anything more than wind.

Naruto knew something was wrong when he heard the large thump of a rock hitting the stone shield, followed by another and then another, before he could call out a warning or start to change his tactics, the cyclone had expanded beyond the shield and the sharp pebbles and larger stones it was carrying with it slammed into he, Sakura, and Sasuke, picking them up and tossing them away like toys. Even Kakashi and Kamui were sent flying away from Sayaka. 

In the end, only Fudo managed to remain on his feet, though he slid several meters and was covered from head to toe in dirt before the storm died down.

Sayaka looked at the three Leaf genin and sneered. "Don't take us so lightly, boy, we're not the sort of trash you're used to dealing with."

Naruto groaned as he pushed a large tree branch off of his chest and sat up, shaking gravel from his hair and surprising himself with the amount of blood that dripped down as well. The dirt within the whirlwind had cut into him like tiny knives as he was picked up and thrown aside, leaving him covered in scratches and a few deep cuts. His pants, which weren't as thick as his jacket, had ripped in several places, meaning – he noted with annoyance – that he would either have to buy a new pair or try to sow these up when he got home. "What the hell was that?" he demanded.

"My ability allows me to combine the two types of chakra I am most compatible with, Wind and Earth," Sayaka replied simply. "I can blow you away, crush you, or do both at once."

Naruto didn't bother pointing out that wind and earth didn't combine into dirty wind. The fact that she was able to use two chakra elements at the same time, even if they didn't combine, was impressive enough. He'd never even heard of someone doing that. Usually the chakra elements either combined to form something new or they had to be used one at a time. 

The sound of crunching wood announced Sasuke's emergence from within a pile of tree branches, Sakura was with him, her one good arm draped over his shoulder. He'd somehow had the presence of mind to catch her either before or just after the whirlwind struck them. The fact that he was far more bloodied than Sakura meant that he'd also managed to shield her from the worst of it. Naruto could have kissed him for his quick thinking, but now was not the time… and he had no intention of going through _that_ again.

"Sakura-chan, are you alright?" Naruto asked.

"I-I'm fine," she replied shakily as she pushed ever so slightly away from Sasuke, taking the majority or her weight off of his shoulder. Naruto thought she was beginning to look pale and wondered if it was from the shock or the blood loss, not that it mattered.. "Thank you, Sasuke-kun," she whispered.

Sasuke grunted, an unreadable expression on his face, and then turned to Naruto. "Still think you're going to take them on your own, dumbass?"

Naruto grinned. "Maybe." But even as he said it, he knew that these two would be trouble if he had to fight them with Sasuke and Sakura around. Or course, this was what he'd wanted for his team, more or less, though he hadn't expected that they'd be fighting anyone like this. Besides that, whether he liked it or not, he probably couldn't fight these two and win unless he actually fought them seriously and that would only lead to questions he didn't want to answer. Sasuke had just started to accept him as an equal and had proved himself willing to let Naruto help him. If he suddenly found that Naruto was actually light-years ahead of him, it would irrevocably change – perhaps even ruin – the friendship that they were just starting to build.

Sasuke smirked, for some reason it seemed almost like a fond expression on his face. "Hn, idiot."

Naruto made his decision and prayed it was the right one. The fact was that Sasuke needed something like this anyway. His ego and confidence had taken a little hit lately and while Naruto wanted Sasuke to be humble enough to let his friends help him, he didn't want Sasuke so unconfident that he was unable to realize his full potential. It would be simple enough to keep an eye on him and give him any help that was needed. If he had to step in and show Sasuke what he really could do, so be it, it wouldn't change things any more than just showing him right now and if he waited he might not even be needed. 

"Alright then, since you're spoiling for a fight, you can have the girl."

Sasuke frowned. "Why her?"

"You're a fire-type chakra user, aren't you? Your jutsu have a better chance of actually doing something to her," Naruto explained, not adding that Sasuke was also a natural lightening type chakra user, technically making him almost her complete opposite, though Sasuke might not be aware of it yet. "Besides, if you get your ass handed to you in front of Sakura-chan, it'll just make me look better by comparison!" He looked over at Fudo and sighed as he lied, "And, like you said, I probably can't take both of them… yet. Sakura-chan, you sit tight. With that shoulder, you won't be able to do much. Just keep an eye on Showoff, he might need a little help."

Sakura nodded weakly, her now-bloodstained hand still tightly clutching her shoulder.

Farther off in the trees they heard the sounds of battle signaling that Kakashi and Kamui had recovered from Sayaka's demonstration.

"Alright," Naruto said as he drew a kunai and took a step towards Fudo, "let's get wild."

o

o

A/N: So, there you have it, the bad guys want to steal Sasuke and Kakashi's Sharingans and any other ability they can get their hands on. Back when we were hearing about how incredible Haku was with his ice abilities and how amazing Kakashi was with his Sharingan and even a bit later when we learned about Hinata almost getting kidnapped in an effort to steal her Byakugan, I thought we might see something like this in canon – more than what we got with Orochimaru's desire for a "special" body. But, hey, at least we got about ten straight chapters of Sasuke and Itachi staring at each other while fighting with genjutsu…

The names for Sayaka and Fudo also come from _The Legend of Kamui_ by Sanpei Shirato.

Happy Easter to those who celebrate it or just like chocolate eggs!


	18. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

o

Naruto darted forward and then rolled to the side as a white projectile passed through the spot he'd been just a split second before. As he began moving forward again, a second Naruto leapt nimbly over his head, irritatingly stepping on his shoulder to gain even more height, flipped in the air and then aimed a kick at the large, cloaked Fudo. He never even got close to his target before he vanished in a puff of smoke as a bone struck him in the head. A third Naruto sprinted out of the bushes to their left. He drew a kunai from his holster as he somersaulted forward to avoid being destroyed, and then drove it up at Fudo's throat. The blade almost reached its target before the large man's powerful fist slammed into the clone sending it flying into a nearby tree where it promptly vanished into another cloud of smoke. With the other two occupying Fudo's attention, the first Naruto managed to make his way behind the missing-nin. He drew a kunai, reared back, and was impaled through the head as Fudo's left shoulder blade suddenly extended, slicing through his cloak and skin.

More Narutos were already moving to position to attack, each probing Fudo's defenses a little differently and transmitting the information back to the original. In addition to analyzing the effect of the clones' attacks, the real Naruto was doing his best to keep an eye on Sasuke without _appearing_ to be keeping an eye on Sasuke. So far, he hadn't seen Sayaka do anything that would worry him, but the fact that she wasn't doing anything to worry him was actually worrying him _more_.

The missing-nin – or Collectors, if you wanted to accept the name they'd given themselves – had come out and said that they wanted Sasuke and the Sharingan he might possess, so it wasn't surprising that they weren't trying to kill him, but Sayaka didn't seem to be even attacking him. She would dodge or defend herself against his attacks, but even when there were clear – and probably intentional – openings, she never tried to take advantage.

The second wave of clones had broken on the rock that was Fudo and a third wave was launched. As near as Naruto could tell, the ninja was only able to use his bone ability on the left side of his body. So far, every clone that attacked from that side had been destroyed by flying bones, but those on the other side had been dealt with through more conventional means. Being rather inexperienced in the medical arts, Naruto wasn't completely sure what all went in to grafting a kekkei genkai into a new body, but he doubted it was an exact science or even all that easy to accomplish. Chances were, Fudo either didn't have the ability with bones on the right side of his body or didn't have enough control of them to use them properly. He would have to test the theory out a few times before he chanced acting on it himself, but it seemed reasonably plausible.

Sayaka rolled to the side as Sasuke threw a kunai at her, and then formed some seals and drove her hands into the ground. A half second later the ground under Sasuke's feet turned to thick, deep mud, sucking him down until he was trapped half way up to his knees. The Uchiha's eyes widened in alarm and he quickly reached down, hooking his hands behind his bent knees and began to pull himself out of the mud. Sakura hurried towards him, still clutching her bleeding shoulder and moving far slower than was normal for her, but before she could reach him a gust of wind picked her off her feet and tossed her several meters in the air.

Naruto leapt and caught her before she struck a tree or met any other equally unpleasant fate. Their feet had barely touched down before he'd let go of the pink haired kunoichi and was heading for Sasuke.

Three steps before he would have reached Sasuke, Sayaka called out, "Doton: Chiri Kinko!"

A large slab of dirt rose out of the ground in front of him. Naruto tried to turn left, but was met by another wall, and then another until he was surrounded on all four sides, he looked up just in time to see the dirt push out from the top of each wall until he was completely closed in.

Outside, Sakura and the nearly free Sasuke looked on with horror as the dirt cube suddenly contracted and shrunk until it was impossible for a human to not have been crushed within it. With a great slurping pop, Sasuke wrenched his right leg out of the mud and then quickly did the same with the other. He was about to attack the smirking Sayaka when suddenly a hand reached out of the ground beneath her, grabbed hold of her ankle and then pulled her down until only her head was left above ground. Less than a meter away from where she'd been standing, Naruto suddenly rose up out of the dirt, shaking mud and gravel from his clothes.

He glanced over at Sasuke and winked. "You weren't worried about me, where you?" he asked as he drew a kunai and drove it down at the seemingly helpless woman's head.

A thick sheet of rock slid out of the ground at an angle, intercepting Naruto's kunai strike. The blond had just enough time to look surprised before a large rock leapt out of the ground and slammed into his chest, sending him tumbling away.

Sasuke reached into his weapon holster and flung a handful of kunai and shuriken at Sayaka's head.

Another rock rose up in front of her face, blocking Sasuke's attack as well. The three genin could only watch as Sayaka rose up out of the ground without the slightest appearance of effort.

Naruto rubbed his side in annoyance and slowly got to his feet. This was going to be harder than he'd thought. Fudo would hopefully remain occupied with the clones that continued to attack him, but that level of distraction probably wouldn't last forever. Despite his plans on letting Sasuke deal with Sayaka on his own, it looked like she was too much for him at this point… she would probably even be a pain for Kakashi to deal with right now.

"We'll have to work together to take her down," Naruto called out to Sasuke. "I can keep the big guy busy until we've dealt with her, but he's not goi—"

Before he could finish, a line of sharp, jagged rocks sprung up from the ground, starting at Sayaka's feet and rushing towards him. He dove to the side and then glanced over his shoulder as the attack continued along its path until it ran into a large tree and split it open.

"Fudo!" Sayaka yelled. "Stop messing around and deal with the blond trash, he's irritating me!"

"Sorry, Sayaka-chan!" Fudo called out as he finished off several more clones. "It's just that there's a whole lot of him!"

Sayaka shook her head in annoyance and then began forming seals. "Gufuu Kabe."

A four small tornados rose up out of the ground in front of her, side by side, and then headed for Naruto. Naruto tried running to the side to get around them, but they quickly changed direction, always moving in a way that would force him to move away from Sasuke. He knew he didn't want to let the wall of wind touch him, but he also didn't want to let Sayaka separate him from his friends.

He leapt into a tree and quickly moved to the higher branches until he could see over the top of the tornados. Another group of them were slowly herding Sasuke off to the east. Naruto couldn't see Sakura anywhere.

He was about to try something insane – like using shadow clones to launch himself over the tornados – when a memory from a clone hit him and he instantly flipped backwards out of his tree and onto another one a short distance away. As his feet glued themselves to the new tree he looked over at where he'd been just in time to see the tree come crashing down as Fudo slammed his shoulder into it.

The man's strength was almost as monstrous as his face.

Naruto eyed the four tornados that were now simply remaining in one spot, keeping him from following Sasuke and Sayaka, and sighed. Sasuke was a good ninja; he'd be okay on his own, or with Sakura backing him up, for a few minutes. That wind jutsu had to be taking a lot of chakra to maintain, he could probably just wait it out and then go help Sasuke or at least send a shadow clone after him to see how the fight was going. In the mean time, he was alone with Fudo, he'd never have a better chance to finish the man off quickly.

His clones filled the area around Fudo, always moving and shifting, making it impossible for the large man to keep his eye on any one of them for more than a few seconds before they disappeared into the crowd and reappeared somewhere else. The reason was, naturally, to give the real Naruto the chance to get behind his opponent where he'd be able to do the most damage when it came time to strike.

He let one wave of clones crash against the missing-nin, but they – just like all the others he'd used – were unable to even draw blood from the boulder of a man. Naruto decided that he would have to go in the next group. After all this time, he knew what spot he'd be aiming for, from behind and to the right, just below and behind the ear. Unless Fudo had been intentionally letting it seem like he couldn't use bones from that side of his body, he would have no defenses other than his powerful, but slow, fists. An attack at that spot would either kill the missing-nin or debilitate him enough so that he would be defenseless against the next attack which would definitely kill him.

He wouldn't even have to use any advanced jutsu which would save him from annoying questions when the body was examined later.

Naruto drew a kunai and then he and his clones struck as one. Three vanished in a puff of smoke as several bones flew from Fudo's hand, another was kicked into two others causing all of them to vanish as well, but they were on the opposite side of Naruto, serving their purpose by distracting his enemy. He dropped down behind Fudo as silent as a ghost and then lunged forward, kunai stabbing at the vital point he'd decided upon, Fudo didn't even turn to look at him.

And then, two very odd things happened simultaneously and neither of them involved Fudo falling to the ground, clutching at a fatal neck wound that was showering the area in blood. First, the blade of Naruto's kunai snapped off about halfway up. Second, because of the brake and then the remaining portion of the blade sliding along Fudo's skin, Naruto's hand slammed into the back of the man's jaw with a loud crack.

He pulled his hand back quickly as the pain reached his brain and the surprise of those two unexpected events hit him. He paused only for a split second but even that was enough to put him in mortal danger. Fudo twisted around, his left hand already swinging forward, with several bones spiking around it. Naruto instantly threw himself backwards, trying to twist away from the blow in the air, but even his quick reactions weren't fast enough for him to get away clean. The bones ripped open his jacket and shirt and took a deep gouge out of his skin.

The remaining clones jumped between the real Naruto and Fudo, moving around the large man so that Naruto was soon lost within their numbers and could then safely move up into a tree to check his injuries.

The cuts across his stomach and chest were bleeding but not serious, not for him anyway. Already he could see the blood beginning to clot a little as Kyuubi's healing power did its thing. With that small worry being taken care of, he turned his attention to his right hand… and groaned.

It was worse than he'd thought.

Already a large dark bruise was forming on the top of his hand where he was guessing at least a couple of bones had broken. On top of that, his middle and ring finger no longer responded when he tried to move them. He wouldn't be able to form many seals now if he decided to forgo limiting himself to jutsu he had a right to know instead of ones he'd learned or invented in the future. Unfortunately, he wasn't entirely sure he could actually beat this enemy while basically only using Kage Bunshin, some kunai, and a lot of cleverness. Were they fighting so hoard of enemies, with nothing particularly special about them, he might have been willing to use something more advanced and then hid the body, but there were only three of them and they all had at least one or two bloodline abilities, Kakashi would be sure that they were either brought back to Konoha or left somewhere safe to be retrieved by ANBU. There was no way Naruto could claim that his opponent had been lost somehow without arousing suspicions of one sort or another.

"Yo, you okay out there?" Fudo called out as he batted away another group of clones who were attacking him with about as much luck as Naruto had had. "I forgot to tell you, but my family was known for their hard skin, practically like steel some people used to say. Until Kamui-sempai gave me this Shikotsumyaku, I didn't even know if my skin could actually be broken by anything. Fortunately whenever I mess with these bones of mine, the skin knits right back up. Pretty handy, huh?"

Naruto didn't bother replying as he untied the kunai pouch around his right leg, forced his broken hand into a fist and used the straps from the pouch to tie his hand so that it would remain a fist rather than flailing about uselessly. He was naturally right handed, so he would have to spend the rest of the fight using mirror stances of what he normally did and fighting against instincts that told him to punch with his right hand, but that wasn't really that hard, just annoying. He'd practically been an ambidextrous fighter since about the third month of his trip with Jiraiya.

The real problem was the limits that were now placed on his jutsu creation. If Fudo had some sort of hard skin ability, it no doubt was an Earth elemental manipulation. What he needed was some sort of lightening jutsu to counter it. Naruto didn't know many lightening jutsu, as it was one of the elements that he was least compatible with, but he knew enough of the "cool" ones to get by something like this. Chidori would do the trick, or Raikiri if he wanted to be on the safe side, not that it mattered at this point. Without his middle and ring finger he couldn't form the seals necessary to use any of them.

Of course, using Chidori or its big brother would be paramount to writing that he was anything _but_ a genin all over the Hokage monument – perhaps even more blatant than that. Kakashi would know exactly what he was looking at the moment he saw the body, but even if he missed it initially, it would be clear once the nature of Fudo's kekkei genkai was known.

_'Next time I go back in time, I'm going to ask to be someone other than a stupid genin who doesn't know his head from his ass,'_ Naruto grumbled, _'If I was Kakashi I could have finished this guy off really… quick…'_ He smacked his forehead with his hand… and then grunted as he bit back a yelp of pain as his right hand protested the sudden blow. "I'm an idiot," he groaned. "I don't need Chidori to beat this bastard. I just need Kakashi."

By the time the last of Naruto's clone army vanished in a cloud of smoke, Naruto had completed most of his plan in his head. The first part was the only one that would be all that painful. He reached down and pulled the improvised bandage from around his hand and forced his middle finger into the proper position while his others went there naturally. It hurt like hell to move the broken digit and he was treated to the sound of something breaking farther within his hand as he did it, but all that mattered was that it was in the right spot for the jutsu. He would be healed within a day or so, anyway.

"Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"

Once more the area filled with Narutos. Two of them instantly went to search for Sasuke and Sakura, while the others attacked the large missing-nin staring up at them from the forest floor. Unlike his uses of them up until this point, these clones didn't attack in small groups, probing for weaknesses, they went after Fudo like a large swarm of locust, spilling down out of the trees and from along the ground. Many were destroyed by flying bones or by his powerful punches, but there were more to take their place. They went after his legs first, not bothering to punch or attack him with kunai, they simply tackled him, throwing him off balance enough so that when the ones from above landed on his head and shoulders, his body was unprepared for the additional weight and he was driven to the ground. Dozens of clones grabbed him by his cloak, his legs, arms, anything they could get their hands on and began to lift and pull him in the direction that Kakashi had last been heard. The ones on the left side were continuously being destroyed as spiky bones suddenly exploded out of the man's skin or were shot from his fingertips, but there were more than enough to keep him moving in the right direction.

As the clones were killed their knowledge was transferred among the group and, most importantly, up to Naruto who followed at a safe distance, for the moment while he tried to figure out how exactly he was going to talk Kakashi into going along with this little plan of his. Too bad there didn't seem to be any lakes around, Naruto suspected that all he really had to do was throw Fudo into a deep body of water to finish the fight, he weighed a ton… maybe more.

After several minutes they broke through into a small meadow that had once probably been very picturesque. The stream that the miners had used to wash up passed through one edge or it and there were many grey boulders sticking out of the green grass and large flowering plants… or at least Naruto assumed there had been green grass and large flowering plants there. There was evidence that such things had once existed there, now there was a lot of trampled grass and large flowering plants as well as a lot of burnt grass and large flowering plants and, most importantly, there was two men attacking each other over and over again as they destroyed the natural beauty around them.

The Narutos threw Fudo as far as they could into the clearing. Unfortunately this didn't get him even past the crowd of clones surrounding him and several were crushed as his monstrous weight came down on them with nearly earth shaking force. He was slow to get up, so the remains of the army – now nearly half destroyed – attacked him again. They weren't trying to hurt him, as that was beyond their ability without the use of jutsu, but they could keep him on the ground and distracted while Naruto put the rest of his plan into motion… as soon as he was sure how to do so.

Naruto knew he needed to get Kakashi to come over to him and somehow he needed to convince his jounin that they should switch opponents, if only for a little while so that Kakashi could finish off Fudo. The problem was, if Kakashi came, then so would Kamui and that might make it difficult to relate a plan _and_ convince Kakashi to go along with it _and _give Kakashi the time to create the Chidori _and_ keep Fudo in the dark so that Kakashi could actually hit him with it.

On a list of all of the plans he'd ever made, Naruto suspected that this one ranked somewhere near the bottom, probably just below painting the Hokage's faces so people would pay attention to him, but well above bringing his friends along when he went after Akatsuki and definitely far, far above allowing Sakura to come with him when he tried to assassinate Orochimaru in Sasuke's body… so far this plan hadn't gotten any friends killed yet, after all.

ooo

Kakashi and Kamui were aware of Naruto and Fudo before the two (or in this case four dozen) of them were even visible amongst the trees, but neither ninja made a move in the direction of the newcomers. Kamui had no desire to allow Fudo anywhere near Kakashi unless absolutely necessary because the larger man didn't have the delicate touch needed to keep the important part of Kakashi in one piece. It was as likely as not that Fudo would crush Kakashi's head (and the Sharingan with it) during their fight without even intending to. Kakashi, on the other hand, had no idea why Naruto would have gone through what looked to have been a considerable amount of trouble dragging Fudo into the meadow, but he really wished that his student had shown a bit more intelligence in picking his fighting ground. Actually, he wished that his student had shown a bit more intelligence and run away like he'd told the three genin to do. There was teamwork and then there was suicide, they apparently didn't know the difference.

Naruto – or one of him, anyway – was standing a little ways away from the spot where a large group of blond ninja were struggling to keep Fudo on the ground, the large cloud of smoke that was beginning to cover the area attested to the fact that their numbers were rapidly shrinking.

Kakashi dodged the curved blade that Kamui thrust at his chest, spinning on his heel and delivering a backhanded blow with his gloveless hand to the man's face that sent the ninja tumbling away and left Kakashi with an ugly burn mark. He quickly pushed the pain from his mind, knowing that he had no choice but to ignore the burns he was receiving as much as possible.

His fight with Kamui had been mostly a one sided contest. He was faster, stronger, probably more experienced, and possessed a Sharingan on top of all that. His advantages were negated, however, by Kamui's ability to heal every injury he'd received so far as well as the way his skin burned whenever Kakashi touched it. If he didn't have three genin to worry about, which removed several jutsu from his arsenal, he was sure he could win eventually, but for the moment he and Kamui were in a stalemate.

"Yo, Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto called out, waving his arm.

Kakashi cursed under his breath, not taking his eyes off of Kamui as the man rose and prepared to attack again. Why was that idiot calling attention to himself? Couldn't he see the situation here? Did he have any idea what sort of danger they were all in?

Probably not. It would fit with the Naruto that he occasionally observed during their training and missions. Or at least it fit with the clueless hyperactive Naruto. The different Naruto that seemed to have surfaced during the past week, should have known better. That was the Naruto who was capable of almost getting his fingers on a bell, the Naruto who had spotted a hole in Sasuke's form and decisively beaten the boy who was supposed to be a genius, the Naruto who was a competent ninja, potentially even capable of someday being as great a ninja as his father had been… but he was also the Naruto who unnerved Kakashi the most.

It was potentially dangerous to have a student who was still such an unknown quantity, but given his parentage and what was inside of him, perhaps the strange swings in ability were to be expected. He had more chakra and stamina than ninja twice his age and had the genes to be great, if only he could learn to focus a little bit of his energy consistently in the right direction. From what Minato-sensei had said Kushina-san hadn't been all that different when she was a little girl, so perhaps the change in Naruto during the last week was due to him growing out of the genetic influences that had affected his mother when she was his age.

Yes, growing out of them over the course of a couple of days, that made sense….

"Sensei, I need your help," Naruto continued, not even looking at Fudo, who was being held down by fewer Naruto clones every second, or at Kamui, who had shifted his focus towards the boy.

"Naruto, get out of here!" Kakashi yelled. He didn't have time to baby-sit Naruto and fight Kamui. So long as Naruto remained where he was, there was a chance that the missing-nin could use the boy's presence against Kakashi, either by trying to kill Naruto – forcing Kakashi to defend him – or by capturing the boy and holding him hostage – at which point Kakashi would find himself in a situation not unlike the one his father was in all those years ago… and then what would he do? No, he would have to take the fight right at Kamui and keep the missing-nin's attention off of Naruto. He pulled a kunai from his holster and attacked.

Kamui brought his fingers together, flashing through several quick seals that Kakashi saw and found he didn't need to copy ending on the Seal of the Tiger as he took a deep breath. "Katon: Goukakyu no Jutsu!" He pinched his fingers together in front of his lips as he blew out, creating an enormous fireball that scorched the ground along Kakashi's path. The Leaf ninja vanished as the flames surrounded him.

As the flames died down, Kamui looked around, smiling. "Come on out," he called, "we both know it wouldn't be that easy to defeat the Leaf's Copy Ninja Kakashi."

When there was no answer and Kakashi did not reappear, Kamui turned and smiled at Naruto. "Well, since it seems that your sensei is going to continue playing in the dirt for a while, was there something important you needed or do you just enjoy dragging idiots through the woods?"

Naruto returned the man's smile and let his eyes drift towards the sky. His smile grew larger and he nodded upwards.

Kamui frowned and quickly looked up only to find that there was nothing there but clouds and sky. Suddenly the ground beneath him shifted as a hand reached up and caught him by the ankle.

"Doton: Shinjuu Zanshu no Jutsu!"

Before Kamui could even call out in alarm, he had sunk up to his neck in the earth and Kakashi was looking down on him, a kunai clenched in his hand. "Let's see just how impressive that healing ability of yours is." He brought the blade down through the man's head, only to strike stone as Kamui's head became nothing more than a large rock sticking out of the ground. Kakashi didn't even look surprised, he simply spun on his heel, bringing up his kunai and easily blocking Kamui's downward strike as the ninja leapt at him from behind.

"Certainly you didn't think I couldn't see you down there, did you?" Kamui asked. "I'd hate to think that all the stories I've heard about you were merely exaggerations."

"You might have noticed that you weren't able to sneak up on me," Kakashi replied. "My eye sees things even yours can't."

"Perhaps, but your Sharingan has already missed something."

"And what would that be?" Kakashi asked as he twisted his wrist, drawing Kamui's kunai down with unexpected swiftness and then bringing his knee up to connect with the man's wrist, disarming him. Kakashi's own kunai spun in his palm and then he drove it into Kamui's unprotected chest.

Kamui looked up at him as he coughed blood, a triumphant smile on his face. "Look down," he gasped and then took a stumbling step away.

Kakashi's eyes drifted down, and then widened. Kamui hadn't attacked with the weapon he'd been using since the fight started, the knife with the curved blade. Instead he had used a regular kunai with a small explosive tag wrapped around the handle.

Kakashi's arms came up to protect his face just as the tag exploded, throwing them both through the air.

ooo

Sakura had thought that perhaps she could help Sasuke in his fight against the strange missing-nin who had attacked them and forced them away from Naruto. She though she could watch his back in case of a surprise attack or maybe act as a distraction for him, but with her injury she was too slow to be anything but a distraction _to_ _him_ – which explained why Sayaka hadn't bothered trying to separate Sasuke from her as well. At Sasuke's… 'suggestion,' Sakura had taken refuge behind large oak tree and was frantically trying to remember everything she'd ever learned about using healing jutsu during class. Unfortunately the pain in her shoulder made concentrating very difficult. Along with that, she knew the effects of the blood loss were beginning to affect her, she was already dizzy and was starting to feel disoriented and weak. In class they had learned about Shousen no Jutsu, even been shown the basics of what it entailed and the seals for it, but at their age, few of them had the chakra control to properly use the healing technique so it wasn't something drilled into them the way other techniques were. Most of their medical training had consisted of treating wounds with bandages until they could get _proper_ medical treatment from someone who knew what they were doing.

She tried to focus on that class, on the nurse who had come over from the hospital to tell them about being a medic nin and the jutsu that a medic-nin used. The seals… the seals were… Tiger, Hare, Horse, and Rat. Sakura closed her eyes she could do it. Her arm was weak, but she could _force_ it up so she could form the proper seals.

She brought her arms up, took a deep breath. She had to do this so she could help Sasuke. Tiger, Hare, Horse, Rat…

No! That wasn't right. She'd forgotten Dog and it wasn't Hare then Horse, it was Horse _then_ Hare! Yes, that was the right way. She was certain of it now. She'd forgotten Dog because Naruto had pretended to start snoring during the lecture and the nurse was distracted just as she was explaining that part and had to start over. It had made that portion of the lecture a little confusing, but the nurse _had_ told them the proper way during her second try at it.

It was a good thing she'd caught that, if she'd messed up who knows what would have happened? If she'd accidentally killed herself because Naruto was a goof off, she'd have come back and haunted his lazy ass until the end of time!

Tiger, Horse, Hare, Rat, Dog, she ran through the seals slowly, forming each perfectly before moving on to the next. It wouldn't be as powerful as it could have been if she had more training or could form the seals faster, but it would be better than pressing her hand against the hole in her shoulder and bleeding to death.

Sakura's left hand glowed green as the chakra pooled there and the jutsu formed. She waited until the glow seemed to be as bright as it was going to get and then pressed her hand over her right shoulder as she pictured her skin knitting itself back together, just the way the medic-nin had told them to do. The pain eased ever so slightly and she felt something tugging in her shoulder. As the light around her hand faded she removed her blood covered hand and checked her wound.

It wasn't as bad as she'd thought it would be. The skin was still red and irritated, and the pain was beginning to return, but the wound itself was sealed. She reached to the back of her shoulder and tried to inspect herself with her fingers. Apparently she should have applied the jutsu to both sides, because she was still open back there, though hole wasn't nearly as large as it had been.

She'd bought herself time and nothing more, but that would have to be enough. If she could help Sasuke, just a little, before the blood loss overwhelmed her, then it would be worth it.

ooo

Sasuke took a blast of wind to the chest, sending him crashing into a large boulder that sprang up behind him. The dark haired boy hit the rock, slid down it, and then fell face first to the ground, but quickly rolled to his feet, swaying unsteadily.

"This is pointless," Sayaka announced. "If you aren't going to show me what I'm after, I'm just going to crush you and throw you away like the trash you are."

"What are you talking about?" Sasuke demanded, wiping blood from his lips.

"The Sharingan. Either show it to me, or die."

Sasuke glared at her. "Even if I did have it, I'd die before I'd let you see it."

"You might be surprised. The human body can take a lot of damage before it expires." Her fingers flashed through a quick series of seals and then thrust her hands forward.

The ground around Sasuke's feet seemed to liquefy momentarily, as it had with one of her earlier jutsu, only this time it twisted up his legs almost to his waist and then hardened, trapping him in place.

"Shall we see how much fight you have in you now?" Sayaka sneered as she walked over towards him. "If you don't show me what I want now, maybe I'll start crushing body parts. I seem to recall boys your age being ruled by a different head than the one on their shoulders, perhaps we should see how you handle being under _new_ leadership… or maybe I'll let you take a nap before we decide what to do with you."

Sasuke's hand instinctively reached for a kunai, but the holster where he kept them was underneath the large rock formation that had swallowed half his body. Sayaka smiled as she saw his movement, it was the knowing smile of a predator that had finally trapped her prey.

She reached out a hand and ran a long fingernail down his cheek, Sasuke tried to throw a punch at her, but she easily swatted it aside as her nail cut into his skin, leaving a burning sensation along its path. "Just a little something to calm you down," she whispered. "It won't kill you, but it will hurt a bit and then you'll fall asleep for a little while. Long enough for Kamui to finish off—"

An explosion went off a short distance from them, causing her to pause and smile.

"Plenty of time for Kamui to take care of Kakashi-san and then you, Uchiha-san, will come with us until we decide if you are worth being harvested or if you're just more trash that needs to be thrown out."

Sasuke winced against the pain in his cheek. The burning sensation was spreading out across his face and down his neck. It felt like someone was rolling a lit cigarette along his skin. Even more alarming to him was the sense of lethargy that followed just behind the burning. Already his arms felt like they weighed about twenty-five kilograms and they were growing heavier with each passing second. Soon he would be lucky if he could even lift his eyelids, let alone his arms.

Sayaka ran her fingers up along his face and brushed a sweaty lock of dark hair away from his eyes. "I really hope you have something special for me here," she told him. "It'll be a shame to have to cut out these eyes for nothing and it would be even worse if Kamui was the only one to get anything after all the trouble we went through setting up this trap."

"You knew… we were coming?" Sasuke asked weakly.

"Not you specifically, of course, but we knew Konoha would send someone. After all, that's why we paid that failing mine town to request ninja to help fight off some nonexistent bandits. We _hoped_ we would get someone special instead of the trash that pollutes the ninja world. We never dreamed we'd get a chance at picking up three Sharingans!" Her hand slid down his face once more and then she squeezed both of his cheeks together, her nails pricking his skin once more, starting the burning feeling all over again as she said, "For your sake, I sincerely hope you have a Sharingan, I'm sick of Kamui always taking all of the good abili—argh!"

A kunai pierced her arm and then another sliced into her leg.

"Keep your hands off of Sasuke-kun!" Sakura growled as she stepped out from behind the tree.

Sayaka pulled the blade in her arm free and tossed it aside contemptuously. "You're still here? I figured you'd died or ran off a long time ago."

"I don't leave my friends behind," Sakura replied coldly. "I'll always do whatever I can to help Sasuke-kun, even if it costs me my life!"

Sayaka smiled wickedly. "That's good, because it just did!"

Sakura pulled three more kunai from the holster on her right leg and flung them at the dark haired woman. Before they'd traveled half the distance to their intended target, a swirl of wind began to spiral around Sayaka.

"Trash like you can't even touch me!" she yelled as the whirlwind grew larger and larger, whipping her long hair about as she stood in the middle of it.

"Sakura, take cover!" Sasuke yelled. It took all of his strength, but he was able to get his arms up in front of his chest. They weren't really heavy, he knew, they just felt heavy because of the drugs in his system. Once they were in position, his fingers knew what to do: Snake, Tiger, Monkey, Boar, Horse, and then Tiger again. His fingers flew through the seals without needing a single thought from his drug-addled brain. He took as deep of a breath as he could, dragged his fingers up to his lips and then blew out.

The flames shot from his mouth and were swallowed up by mini cyclone, turning it from clear to a deep red as the wind fed the fire even after Sasuke had stopped blowing. From somewhere within it, Sayaka screamed in pain.

Sasuke's strength gave out and body pitched forward, the rocks covering his legs were the only thing that kept him upright. The flaming whirlwind blew hotter and hotter and he could vaguely feel the skin on his face growing painfully warm from his proximity to the fire, but it seemed like it was happening from so far away. It hurt, but the pain was distant, maybe even happening to someone else, he couldn't tell anymore.

It became more and more difficult to open his eyes each time he blinked. Dimly he thought he saw someone running towards him. Maybe it was Sayaka, if so, then it didn't really matter, nothing really mattered, just as long as he could close his eyes and let himself be swallowed by the nothingness that was creeping up on him, he didn't really care about anything…

"Sasuke-kun!" someone yelled or maybe he was just hearing things. "Sas…e-k…!" Whatever, if they were yelling, that was fine, he didn't care, he was so tired he doubted they'd be able to disturb his sleep anyway… let them yell, it didn't matter…

ooo

Kakashi was flung away from the explosion, smoke trailing from his burnt clothing and skin. The pain was incredible, but he'd lived through worse. The real problem was that he was totally unprotected in the air and wasn't sure he'd be able to flip himself over before he landed, meaning he was probably going to either hit a tree or the ground head first. Several escapes from his predicament flashed through his mind, but his body was still recoiling from the shock of the explosion. He could barely think straight, moving his body was out of the question.

He felt his body reach the height of its arc and begin to descend. It wouldn't be long now. If he'd been thrown as high as it felt like he had, there was a very real possibility that falling on his head from this height would kill him. Not exactly the way he'd expected to go out, but that hardly mattered anymore.

"I've got you, sensei," Naruto called out as several hands and arms caught hold of him and helped him turn in the air.

Kakashi landed amongst a half dozen Narutos all of whom were asking if he was alright, causing an annoying combination of voices to hit him at once.

"I'll be okay," he grumbled shaking his head. "Where's Kamui?"

The Narutos pointed at a shape that was just beginning to stir. From what he could tell, Kamui had taken just as much damage as he had in the blast, the only difference being that Kakashi's injuries were going to stick around, Kamui's would already be healing.

"You need to get out of here, Naruto," Kakashi told the blond firmly. "I can't fight him if I have to worry about you."

The Naruto directly in front of him, who might have been the real Naruto, smiled somewhat sheepishly and scratched the back of his head. "Uh, actually, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind trading with me."

"Trading?"

"Yeah, I don't think I can beat that big guy, his skin is made out of metal or rock or something and I don't know any lightening jutsu." He held up his hand, showing the bruises and what looked like a couple of broken bones. "Plus, he can shoot out his bones and I can't always seem them coming. So I thought… since you're a jounin and all, you probably knew a lightening jutsu to counter his rock skin and maybe you'd be able to see those bones coming when he shoots them."  
"Sorry, Naruto," Kakashi said as Kamui got back to his feet on the other side of the meadow. The missing-nin grabbed one of his arms, which was bent halfway between his elbow and wrist, and twisted it until the broken bones were back in place and healing. "I don't think I can fight both of them at the same time, not after that explosive tag, at least."

Naruto shook his head. "You don't have to. You just have to take care of the big guy while I keep that other bastard busy… Uh, I mean, if you know any jutsu you could use on him."

"Naruto, this isn't a game. These guys aren't like Mizuki or anyone else you've ever faced. They'll kill you the second you leave yourself open."

"Well, he has to find the real me first, doesn't he." He brought his hands together and yelled, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"

Instantly the meadow filled with an army of Narutos who charged Kamui with reckless abandon. Kakashi looked on in dismay at the display of power. He'd heard about Naruto and Iruka's fight against Mizuki and that Naruto had created a hundred or more clones, but this took it even a step farther.

_'There must be nearly a thousand of them here,'_ Kakashi realized as he watched the battle beginning to unfold, _'and Naruto doesn't even seem fazed by it. This is far more than I could do!'_

Naruto looked up at Kakashi expectantly and asked in a too innocent to be real voice, "Will that distract him long enough, sensei, or should I make some more?"

Kakashi sighed and shook his head. The boy was a brat, no doubt about that, but it would have been hard not to like him even if he had different parents. "Stand back and watch. I'll show you something you might like."

Naruto gave his teacher some room as Kakashi formed his seals. Blue bolts of electricity crackled around them, the sound gave made it sound like a large flock of birds was passing nearby. The lightening grew and then centered in the palm of Kakashi's right hand. The jounin pulled himself to his full height, his hand shaking as it struggled to hold all of the chakra that was pulsing within it and then said, "Let him up, I'm ready."

With a grin, Naruto brought his hands together and disappeared in a cloud of smoke, he'd been nothing more than another clone all along. Instantly the message was relayed to all the rest of the clones, most of whom disregarded it, but the ones that had been struggling with Fudo nodded to one another.

Kakashi wanted to smile at the sight, but held back. The kid already knew how to use his favorite jutsu effectively; maybe he really did have a shot at becoming something special. At the same time, he was being unexpectedly intelligent again. Not for the first time, he promised himself that he would get to the bottom of the mystery that was Uzumaki Naruto… but there wasn't time for that right now.

The clones released their captive and tried to leap away, but half their number was cut down before they succeeded in escaping. Fudo scrambled to his feet – an act that seemed to take him considerable effort, probably because of his weight – and looked around the meadow in surprise as the Naruto army swarmed around Kamui, who could only be seen by the clouds of smoke rising up from where he was dispatching clones.

"Yo! Sempai!" the big man called out. "Do you need any help?"

The only things he heard by way of reply were the sounds of the clones yelling and what sounded… birds chirping. Fudo turned his eyes away from where he thought Kamui might be and scanned the area for what was making the second sound. It only took a second to spot Kakashi holding something that was glowing blue in his hand, with lightening blots rising up his arm and crackling all around him.

The Leaf jounin charged at Fudo, moving so fast he seemed to be nothing more than a streak of blue and silver shooting across the grassy meadow. Fudo chuckled flicked his left hand towards Kakashi, sending a shower of fourteen phalanges as his fingers momentarily deflated, bending bonelessly as they waited for his kekkei genkai to regrow the expelled bones.

Kakashi took a half step to the side, ducked, and then leapt and spun before landing on his feet and continuing his charge with only the slightest break in his stride.

Fudo gasped in alarm. Fourteen bones traveling so fast they were barely visible and Kakashi had dodged them all with ease. He bent his wrist and tried firing another bone, but before he could, the Leaf jounin was upon him, his hand sparkling with blue death.

Kakashi's hand shot forward, piercing the man's hard skin, and driving all the way to his heart. A bone shot out from Fudo's chest, clipping Kakashi's left shoulder and drawing blood, but it was the final act of a dying man.

Fudo looked down at the silver haired ninja and coughed blood as his knees gave out. "Damn," he whispered, "I should have… known that asshole… Kamui would get me killed…"

Kakashi pulled his arm from the dead man's chest and let out a slow breath. A Raikiri after having been injured as well as keeping his Sharingan uncovered for this long had taken its toll on him. He reached up and pulled his hitai-ate down over his left eye, hoping that a short break from using it would allow him to regain a portion of his stamina.

He looked at Naruto – or _a_ Naruto, anyway – and asked, "Where are Sakura and Sasuke, are they alright?"

The Naruto smiled and disappeared in another puff of smoke. A second later, a new Naruto spoke up. "There was another clone watching them," he explained, "I'm not sure about the exact location, a little ways to the west of where I was fighting Fudo originally." He pointed in the approximate direction. "Sakura's hurt, but something happened to Sasuke, I'm not sure what. I'm pretty sure they took care of that Sayaka lady, though."

"Go find them," Kakashi instructed. "Help them out until I get there. I'll take care of Kamui."

Naruto looked his sensei up and down and shook his head. "I can hold him for now, you go look for them. If Sasuke's hurt, you'll do him more good than me. I don't know any healing jutsu yet."

Kakashi wasn't used to the idea of having a subordinate not only contradict him, but also issue something that sounded distinctly like an order, but that didn't stop him from seeing what Naruto was saying. With so many clones, Naruto could keep Kamui occupied for quite a while with little danger to himself, giving Kakashi enough time to recover his energy and make sure Sakura and Sasuke were safe.

Not that he liked the idea of leaving Naruto to fight a possibly unkillable missing-nin, but in the heat of battle, one couldn't always have everything go the way he wanted.

"The real Naruto better not get anywhere near him, and you better keep a good number of shadow clones on him at all times until I get back, got it?"

Naruto grinned, "Of course, sensei. What makes you think I'd have it any other way?"

Kakashi looked at the confident boy for a moment and then said, "One of these days, I'm going to figure you out… so stay alive until then." He looked over his shoulder at the spot where Kamui was fighting the clones. "This is our teamwork on this one, Naruto. I need to be able to trust you not to engage him with your real body unless I tell you to, got it?"

Naruto had paled ever so slightly when Kakashi talked about figuring him out, but he quickly recovered and nodded. "Just get Sasuke and Sakura-chan and make sure they're okay. Trust me, sensei, I wouldn't do anything to disappoint you."

Kakashi hesitated, wanting to give himself more time to think about the way Naruto had just said that or to figure out why Naruto would become visibly nervous when told he was going to be figured out, and especially wanting to talk both himself and Naruto out of such a foolish plan, but he didn't have the time or energy to waste on any of those things. Then the sky lit up back in the direction that Naruto had come from when he dragged Fudo out of the woods, and Kakashi's time had run out. He leapt into the trees and took off at high speeds towards the light, praying for Naruto's safety under his breath.

Naruto watched until Kakashi was completely gone and then turned back to where Kamui was increasing the pace at which he was destroying the clones. The temptation to take on the man himself was immense. Kamui had admitted to killing at least a dozen Hyuuga just so he could cut out their eyes and take their abilities. They deserved to be avenged quickly and ruthlessly, but with Kakashi hopefully returning with Sasuke and Sakura any minute – not to mention Kakashi's statement about figuring him out and expressing the need to trust Naruto to do as he was told in this one instance – he wasn't sure if he could take such a risk. Kakashi had obviously caught Naruto doing things he found suspicious and none of those could possibly compare to killing someone like Kamui all by himself.

Naruto vowed once more to come clean to Kakashi as soon as Orochimaru was dealt with. The Chuunin Exam wasn't that far away, they really just had to make it through this one mission and then he could lie low until he had Orochimaru in his sights. After that, he could tell Kakashi everything, and it wouldn't matter if no one believed him or if Kakashi gave him an unfriendly introduction to Morino Ibiki and the rest of Konoha's interrogation specialists.

Naruto could live with almost any ending to the story of his life as long as nothing interfered with Orochimaru entering the Exam or his chance to end the menace of the snake Sannin once and for all.

o

o

A/N: You get this one a day early because I'm not going to be around my computer much tomorrow and I'd hate to accidentally forget to update because of something as _trivial_ as real life! Besides, it's Friday somewhere, right?

Hmm, Kakashi and Kamui's fight wasn't all that grand… I concentrated pretty heavily on Naruto and (to a lesser extent) Sasuke and didn't do a ton with Kakashi. I might have to go back and redo that a little, but for now, this is good enough I think. The chapters already about 9K words of fighting, I don't know if it really needs _more_. Anyway, hope you liked it. Naruto doesn't really go all out, but he definitely doesn't act like a little genin either. Hopefully he was badass enough to satisfy for now – I'd hate to write my best fight this early in the story, though hopefully this is the best so far. Well, please review and let me know what you thought. I'm still not totally confident with my Naruto fight scenes, but I feel pretty good about this one so I'd like to know what everyone else thinks.

Just one more chapter of this and then it's back to Konoha for some R&R. See you next Friday.

Doton: Chiri Kinko – "Dirt Imprisonment"… I hope…

Gufuu Kabe – Torando Wall… maybe…

Shousen no Jutsu – Mystical Palm Technique


	19. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

o

"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura yelled as the tornado of fire finally died down and she was able to run to him. Sasuke's body, from the waist up, was completely limp. As near as Sakura could tell, only the rocks around his legs were holding him up. Unfortunately, this meant that his face and chest had been more exposed to the heat than they might have been if he could have fallen or been blown back by the wind.

Her shoulder seemed to be burning far hotter than what she'd felt from the whirlwind that had backfired on the Sayaka. The pain was growing stronger every minute and she could feel her hands trembling from the affects of the still open wound. She did her best to push the pain away as she neared her teammate's limp body, she just needed to hold herself together until Sasuke was safe, after that she could cry or pass out all she liked.

"Sasuke-kun!" she yelled again as she reached him. He didn't reply or even stir, intensifying her dread. She gently lifted his limp form up so she could see the damage, and was relieved to find that it wasn't as bad as she'd feared. He had second degree burns over a large portion of his face as well as on his arms and a little bit of his neck, but nothing beyond that.

When he didn't stir even after she gave him a gentle shake and called out his name one more time, she took his wrist in her hands and checked for a pulse. It pushed back strongly against her fingertips without a moment's hesitation. He was hurt, but still very much alive.

She turned and looked at the charred corpse lying a short distance away. The flames had burned a hole in the canopy of the forest as well as the grass and bushes along the ground. Because of the smoke in the air and the way the sunlight reflected off of it, the spot where Sayaka lay dead seemed to be surrounded by a white tunnel of light descending from the heavens, the sort of thing that took souls up to their final resting spot.

Sakura hoped that Sayaka was as far from heaven as possible. If there was any justice in the universe, the missing-nin should already be burning in hell for what she had done and what she planned on doing to Sasuke.

She pulled a kunai from her holster and began chipping away at the rocks surrounding Sasuke's legs. The going was slow and her shoulder cried out in protest against the movement, but she needed to get him free and lay him down. With her shoulder injury, she could barely hold him upright so she could see him properly; treating his injuries would be impossible. Second degree burns weren't normally fatal, but the blistering could lead to infection if it wasn't treated properly an infection _could_ kill you. Besides that, it was Sasuke, so she would leave nothing to chance. He was too important.

As she finally began to make progress in digging him out, something landed heavily behind her. Sakura whirled around, kunai held high and ready, even if she felt far from it, and then breathed a sigh of relief when she found that it was only an injured and exhausted looking Kakashi. Though he looked very much the worse for wear, Sakura nearly wept with joy at the sight of the lanky jounin.

"Kakashi-sensei!" she yelled as she wrapped her arms around him without a second thought.

Kakashi flinched away from her touch and grunted in pain, but then patted her on the head in a sort of soothing manner. "Are you alright, Sakura-chan?" he asked calmly.

"I-I'm hurt, but I'm okay," she replied, regaining her composure, "but Sasuke-kun is…"

Kakashi stepped around her and checked on the unconscious genin. He pulled the rocks away from Sasuke's feet in one quick motion and then caught the boy as he fell forward.

"Will he be okay?" Sakura asked.

Kakashi laid the dark haired boy on the ground and then leaned over and listened to Sasuke's heartbeat before examining him for any injuries other than the obvious burns. When his fingers brushed along the thin cuts on Sasuke's face, Kakashi paused and leaned in closer, gently probing the skin and noting a slight discoloration.

"He's been poisoned," Kakashi said as he sat up. "His vitals are strong, so I don't think it was intended to kill, but without knowing what they used, I don't know what its effects will be or how to wake him. We need to get him somewhere safe until either he wakes up or we figure out where the nearest hospital is so we can take him there."

"Where's Naruto?" Sakura asked. With Sasuke apparently no longer in danger, her mid had been able to focus enough to realize that everyone on their team was present except for Naruto.

Kakashi stood up, wincing as he did, and looked back the way he'd come. "He's keeping Kamui busy."

"The leader? Sensei, we have to go help him!"

Kakashi nodded. "I'll carry Sasuke, he'll be defenseless if we leave him here and we don't know for sure that there aren't more 'collectors' out here."

Sakura noticed but didn't comment on the fact that Kakashi didn't seem to be willing to let her stand guard over Sasuke while he went to find Naruto. Probably he'd noticed that she was more injured than she'd told him when he first arrived, certainly the dark crimson stain running down her dress from her shoulder would have been all the evidence he would have needed.

Kakashi lifted Sasuke into his arms and nodded in the direction they would need to go. "If I fall behind, just keep going. I used the Sharingan for a long time and my fight took a lot out of me. I'm no where near one hundred percent anymore."

Sakura thought he was joking, or at least offering a reason for going slow so she could keep up with _him_, but it quickly became apparent that Kakashi was probably not even at fifty percent of what she thought him capable of. He even _stumbled_ a couple of times as they picked their way through the woods.

"Sakura-chan, just go," Kakashi told her when it became obvious that he was getting slower, not faster as they went. "Don't go anywhere near Kamui, just tell the first Naruto you see that we're leaving. He can keep his clones attacking until we're safely away. With any luck, we'll be gone before Kamui even realizes it."

Sakura nodded and hurried in the direction they'd been heading, leaving Kakashi and Sasuke to follow her at a much slower pace. She prayed that Naruto was faring better than they rest of them had so far.

ooo

Kamui quickly grew annoyed with the seemingly never ending battle he that was forced to fight against the legions of blond ninja clones. When the army had first attacked him, he'd thought it was some sort of trick. Perhaps the boy could create a few physical clones of himself, but there was no way that a mere child could do something like this. Even a jounin of average ability would completely exhaust himself creating so many and the clones that he'd made would be just as tired and ready to die as he was. None of these genin seemed to be suffering from chakra depletion due to the original's supply being spread out evenly among them and that just didn't make sense.

What was worse, the clones all fought at a much higher level than a genin should have been able to. They weren't all as powerful as Kakashi had been and their taijutsu form seemed to be a sloppy mess, but they were all quick and agile and strong enough to hurt him. They didn't seem all that interested in beating him down, however, instead choosing to fight in a way that kept him occupied but also forced him to work hard to destroy them.

He couldn't help but wonder if this was how his opponents felt when they faced him over and over again as he healed every time they thought they had defeated him. If so, then he'd underestimated the strength of the psychological damage his healing ability created in battle.

Still, while it was interesting in an academic sense to be on the other side of the tactic, he'd grown annoyed with the game, so it was time to end it. There were still far too many clones for him to keep searching for the original body amongst them all and even his Byakugan couldn't distinguish clone from real due to the fact that they weren't just images, but were actually physical bodies. With Fudo probably dead – if he wasn't he'd be yelling his damn fool's head off – and Sayaka either in the same condition or else still occupied with the Uchiha boy, it was clear that things weren't going his way. He needed to care of these annoying clones quickly so he could move on to either Kakashi or the Uchiha boy and then make his exit.

Kamui let the army drive him back, intentionally angling towards a tree that was out at the edge of the meadow. Once he was close enough to the spot he wanted, he kicked the nearest clone away from him, sending it crashing into two others and then leapt high into the branches, bringing his hands together the second he landed as he started to form the seals for the jutsu he needed to trim their numbers down quickly.

It was complicated jutsu and the seals took a while to perform, by the time he was ready several clones were already running up the tree towards him, but they were too late.

"Katon: Dokugiri Shou!" He took a deep breath and then opened his mouth and forced the sulfurous gas that had been created in his lungs to spew out over the army of clones. It came out purple and red, a flammable poisonous gas that burned and choked the life out of any living thing it touched. The clones closest to reaching him were the first to go, clutching at their throats as they were burned from the inside out, and then the cloud descended upon the rest who had remained on the ground. They saw what was coming and knew it was bad. They turned and tried to run, but their numbers worked against them now, preventing them from getting away quickly. Some stumbled, further slowing them down, others were stricken and jerked violently into their fellow clones knocking them down before they expired in a cloud of smoke.

The burning poison didn't last long, a minute at most, before it was caught up in the faint breeze rolling across the meadow and disseminated until it was too diluted to be harmful anymore. By that time, the damage was more than done. The army of hundreds had been reduced to a half-dozen clones, and amongst them was probably the original who had created such an annoying diversion and allowed Kakashi to escape, unless he'd run as well. Kamui was not one to take failure lightly and was even less fond of defeat and trickery, especially at the hands of a child.

"Are all of you clones," he asked as he dropped to the ground, "or did the original stick around to admire his work?"

"Hard to tell," one of the blond boys answered with a smile, "we all have the same memories."

A kunai shot through the air and pierced the speaker's chest. He vanished in a puff of smoke.

"Guess it wasn't him," said another with a shrug just before another kunai turned him into a cloud of smoke as well.

"Stop this game," Kamui growled. "Come out and fight me, trash."

"Why should I?" another of the blonds asked. "I'm doing pretty well taking you on like this. In fact, why don't we bring a few more of me to the party?"

Kamui chose that boy and sprinted at him, drawing a handful of kunai and throwing them at the remainders. It was only a guess, of course, but this one was the first to refer to himself in the first person, so it was possible that he was the original. His sudden attack caught the boys off guard, the kunai caught three in the chest and one in the shoulder, enough to reduce each of them to clouds of smoke. Then he jumped and sent a powerful kick at the boy's head.

Naruto's surprise hadn't lasted long enough to catch him _that_ off guard. He twisted back and to the side, bringing his arm up to knock aside the kick, but a hasty defense wasn't good enough against a ninja of Kamui's level. The missing-nin let the momentum of his kick carry him around and then brought his other leg up and delivered a solid kick to Naruto's chest.

The blond skipped twice off the ground and the skidded through the grass for another two meters before finally coming to a stop. The quick counter of his attempt at defense had come as a surprise, proving that Kamui was definitely a jounin and an advanced one at that. He barely had time to get his bearings straight before he had to roll to the side and then flip himself up onto his feet to avoid the missing-nin's follow up attacks.

It didn't take long for Naruto to realize that he was in real trouble now. Kamui wasn't a pushover to be taken lightly, he wasn't a slow moving boulder of a man that could be avoided if he had to be, and he wasn't going to take it easy on him just because he was a child. This was the sort of match he would have been in if he'd been forced to deal with Zabuza in a straight fight instead of appearing in the confusion of the battle… maybe even a more difficult fight than Zabuza would have given because Kamui could apparently heal from any wound that was inflicted.

Naruto ducked under a kick, but wasn't quite quick enough to dodge the punch that followed after it and once again found himself on his back and then scrambling back to his feet while trying to avoid death. If Kakashi didn't return soon, Naruto wouldn't be able to continue holding back and expect to win. Of course, if Naruto stopped holding back and Kakashi arrived things could get… complicated.

As his feet were swept out from under him and Kamui's curved bladed knife passed within centimeters of his neck, Naruto decided that he would just take his chances. Every second he waited only made it that much more likely that either Kakashi would return at an inopportune time when Naruto reached the seemingly inevitable point where he was forced to fight back or that Kamui would get lucky and do some serious damage.

He planted his hand on the ground, and kicked up at Kamui's face, forcing the man back a step while Naruto landed on his feet and adjusted his taijutsu stance.

"Let's make this fast," he whispered, "I don't want Kakashi-sensei to come back and see what I can really do."

Kamui smirked, though there was a hint of uncertainty in his eyes as Naruto attacked, his hands and feet suddenly moving far faster and more precisely than they had been earlier. The blond scored two solid blows to Kamui's chest and stomach before the missing-nin began to defend himself properly. He brought his arm up to counter a punch, only to have the blond, choose to grab his forearm, completely ignoring the burning of his own skin, and pull Kamui forward and off balance. Naruto's foot slammed hard into the older ninja's knee, buckling it backwards before he spun and kicked Kamui in the face.

Kamui hit the ground and kicked out his injured leg hard, forcing the joint roughly into the proper spot so that it would heal quicker, and then rolled to the side as Naruto's fist slammed into the ground where the missing-nin's head had been. He scrambled to his feet and charged at the blond who still had his hand on the ground, but just as he was preparing to strike at the suddenly very competent genin, a slab of stone leapt out of the ground. His momentum carried him into it at nearly full speed and the stone didn't budge. Kamui took a step back, shaking his head to clear the ringing from his ears. He didn't have a chance to even try to sidestep the small wall before Naruto's shoulder rammed into it from the other side, tipping it over on top of him.

Three shadow clones appeared next to Naruto, two of them laced their fingers together while the other leapt as high into the air as he could. Naruto jumped onto the hands of the first two and they flung him into the sky. As he passed the airborne clone, it caught hold of his hand and spun in the air, using itself as a fulcrum to increase his speed as he shot like a meteor down on the trapped Kamui. His foot hit the stone slab with enough force to shatter it, crushing – he hoped – anything still trapped below.

Naruto had seen enough of Kamui to know that he couldn't just hope he'd done enough and walk away. Walking away would only let the man heal and then he'd be right back where he'd started. He quickly dug through the stones, looking for flesh, or even traces of blood, but found nothing but dirt and burned grass.

Without stopping to think, he rolled to the side as Kamui's curved knife cut through the air where his head should have been. The moment he was back on his feet, his left leg shot out as he spun, sweeping the missing-nin's feet out from under him. Kamui landed on his back, but instantly jumped up and charged at the blond. The next several attacks and counter attacks exchanged between the two looked as much like a dance as they did a fight with both countering the other's movements and having theirs countered in return.

Twice Naruto pulled kunai from his holster and drove them into Kamui's chest and arm and twice the wounds healed almost instantly. In retaliation, Naruto felt the bite of Kamui's curved knife across his already injured stomach and along his left arm, opening small but irritating wounds that unfortunately did not instantly heal, though he knew they'd be fine in a couple of hours or so.

Finally Kamui leapt back, breathing hard, and glared at the much smaller ninja as he once more tucked his blade inside his robes where it could be easily retrieved if he needed it but would be out of his hands if he needed to use a jutsu. He hated to admit it, but so far they were fighting to a draw… and only because of healing his kekkei genkai. He was hampered by having been forced to fight Kakashi before hand, spending large amounts of chakra healing the wounds he'd received while he tried to wear down his prey, and then being forced to use his Burning Poison Mist jutsu to deal with the army of clones, but those were just excuses. Any amount of chakra he had expended on those things had been more than equaled by the creation of the clone army by his opponent and from the blonds refusal to use his right hand it was obvious that he hadn't escaped his fight with Fudo unharmed.

"Who are you?" Kamui asked as his breathing slowly returned to normal.

"Uzumaki Naruto, future Hokage of Konohagakure," the blond replied with a smile.

"How are you able to expend so much chakra? No genin should be able to do what you've done without suffering from chakra depletion. Is it some sort of kekkei genkai?"

Naruto grinned at him. "Nope, nothing like that. I'm just a genin who failed the final exam three times before finally graduating from the Academy."

Kamui scowled. "A piece of trash then. You have a lot of chakra to use, but without being from an advanced bloodline, you aren't anything special."

"I'm not the one breathing hard," Naruto noted as he waved the missing-nin forward and said, "You've got a couple of bloodlines running around inside you, right? Let's see how long they keep you alive against _this_ piece of trash."

Kamui snarled in rage and ran at the younger ninja. Naruto couldn't help but let the smile of satisfaction spread across his face as he dodged Kamui's swing and slammed his fist into the larger man's jaw, rocking his head back. He wasn't there yet, not by a long shot, but his body was getting stronger and stronger even without really training all that hard outside of his workouts with his team. It might not take as long as he'd thought to regain most of the strength he'd had as an adult.

As the ninja stumbled back, Naruto began to pull chakra into his hand, forcing it to swirl tighter and tighter. He couldn't risk manipulating the nature, not with his weak body and certainly not with so many friends nearby, but even an unfinished Rasengan would be more than enough to put Kamui on his back long enough for Naruto to figure out how to kill him and with luck the telltale damage it would do would heal before anyone – namely, Kakashi – saw it. No one was immortal, surely not all injuries could simply be healed automatically… if he had to, Naruto would just take the man's head. Hopefully that would be an injury that even Kamui couldn't overcome.

He pulled his arm back as the chakra formed into the familiar blue ball, waiting for just the right moment. Kamui reached for a weapon tucked within his robe before he'd even fully recovered from Naruto's punch, but Naruto was already on top of him. There was almost nothing that could stop him from putting the missing-nin down for at least a little while…

"Naruto!" Sakura yelled as she broke clear of the trees and ran towards the two ninja at a sprint.

…Except for that.

Naruto's mind instantly recognized where she was, what she could see, and the probable complications allowing her to see him do this jutsu would cause, but none of that mattered now. Kamui was in front of him and he had to be dealt with. Whatever Sakura saw or thought or told others couldn't be helped at this point, he'd known and accepted the danger when he started fighting seriously. Even if Kakashi was right behind her, there was nothing he could do to change what they would see. He'd hoped the truth wouldn't come out before the Chuunin Exam, specifically before the second part of the Chuunin Exam when he'd get his best shot at Orochimaru, but few things had gone according to plan since he'd woken up in the past, why should this be any different?

His hand flashed forward, slamming the Rasengan into Kamui's chest…

…And the ninja exploded in a shower of rocks.

"Damn it," Naruto cursed as he twisted to the side, expecting to be attacked from behind. No one was there. He looked back and forth and then his eyes fell upon Sakura. "Oh, shit! Sakura-chan, get out of here!"

How stupid of him to overlook something like that. Even someone as egotistical as Kamui must have realized that Naruto could go toe to toe with him for hours. Certainly long enough to disable him in some fashion, if not figure out a way to kill him, but if he took a hostage… Sakura could be Kamui way out of this unexpected mess.

Naruto opened his mouth to call out another warning, but as he did so, he heard the faintest sound of something passing through the wind right behind him. He tried to spin and twist to the side – actually managing to turn so that he was looking at Kamui – but the warning had come too late, his reflexes weren't quite up to the challenge of totally saving him.

Kamui's curve bladed kunai missed Naruto's head, but still came down hard on the blond's shoulder, passing through muscle and bone with ease. Naruto screamed in pain as the blade sunk deep inside him… and then screamed louder as it was ripped out, doing as much or more damage leaving his body as it had entering it.

Whether Kamui had meant to or not, he'd tricked Naruto into thinking that Sakura might be the real target. A stupid trap to fall into, but probably an unavoidable one. Things like this were the reason genin didn't go on B or A rank missions. A jounin could handle himself, but if his genin were in danger, he would be vulnerable, would make mistakes, would be forced to waste precious energy trying to watch out for them. It hadn't even crossed Naruto's mind that Sakura might be perfectly safe, he'd seen her, known what Kamui _could_ do, and started to react in a way that would protect her even as it left himself totally exposed.

He stumbled back from Kamui and managed to half turn towards Sakura, just enough to see her go white as a ghost as blood sprayed from his wound.

"Run," he tried to yell to her, but the only thing that came from his mouth was the red mist of his blood mixing with air in his lungs.

He felt pain in a different spot and saw Sakura's eyes grew so wide that the rest of her face seemed to disappear behind them. She opened her mouth to scream, but he didn't hear her make any noise. He glanced down and found the curved blade poking out of his chest and finally realized that he'd been stabbed again.

"Shit," he whispered as he fell face first into the growing pool of blood beneath him.

ooo

Naruto awoke to find himself lying face down in an ankle-deep pool of dark water with the sounds of dripping echoing all around. He slowly pushed himself to his hands and knees, his long wet hair hanging down in his face making it difficult to see anything more than his hands resting against the stone surface under the murky water. He brought a hand up to brush his hair from his eyes, but stopped halfway.

Something was wrong.

The blond flexed his fingers experimentally and turned his hand over, it was larger than it was supposed to be. For that matter, since when was his hair long enough to hang down in his face like this?

The answer hit him like one of Sakura's fists after an inappropriate joke. He hadn't had hands this big or hair this long since before he awoke in the past. He was an adult again.

Naruto struggled to his feet and looked down at himself, he was wearing the white and red robes of the Hokage of Konohagakure – robes that the village council had, unsuccessfully, fought tooth and nail to keep off of him.

_'How is this…'_ he looked around for the first time and knew at least partially what was happening. He was in the Kyuubi's tunnel. This wasn't – strictly speaking – real, or at least not physically real.

Naruto walked towards the enormous metal gate that had been sealed shut just after he was born. This was the first time he'd seen it since waking up in the past and a part of him felt strangely apprehensive about approaching it. Kyuubi didn't scare him, hadn't _ever_ scared him really, but he…she… _it_ was the cause of a lot of problems in his life, problems that he intended to fix this time around.

"You're here," Kyuubi noted with a growl. "Step closer so I can see you better."

Naruto remained where he was. It wasn't that he didn't want to draw closer to the gate, he just wasn't going to allow himself to be _ordered_ to do it by a demon trapped inside of him. "You can see me just fine," he told the fox.

"Fine, then how about you explain something for me."

"What's that?"

"TELL ME HOW THE HELL YOU DID THIS!!" Kyuubi slammed into the gates at full force and the tunnel shook all around Naruto as the demon's enormous claws dug into the ground, trying to reach him. "I was free! What happened?! What did that bastard, Orochimaru, do to me?!"

Naruto's eyes widened. "You know about Orochimaru?"

"Of course I do," the Kyuubi snarled contemptuously, "I was about to kill that little snake when all of a sudden I woke up back in here!"

"Then you came with me," the blond whispered as realization struck. "You're from the future too!"

"What are you talking about, kid? Explain yourself!"

Naruto ignored him for a moment, dwelling on what it could possibly mean. He'd thought that it was just him – or just his consciousness, anyway – that had been sent into the past, but apparently Kyuubi was attached to him in a way that caused it to be dragged back as well. The blond looked at the gates more closely, noting the way they totally held the demon back unlike other times when he'd been in the tunnel and Kyuubi had been seeping through… contaminating him with its chakra. This looked more like the first time he'd visited Kyuubi, the seal was fresh and strong. Even in this regard he had been granted a second chance.

"I'm a kid again," Naruto told the demon suddenly feeling a little giddy despite the fact that he knew he was probably lying on the ground bleeding to death in the real world. "Somehow we got sent back in time, back to when I first became a ninja. That means the seal is still strong and you're as trapped behind it as you were when my father first stuck you in there."

Kyuubi's eyes glowed red with rage and its claws racked impotently against the metal gate, but it held its tongue.

"Seems like history is repeating itself though," Naruto continued. "My body is hurt. I'm going to need to borrow your power for a little while."

"No."

"Don't forget what happens if this body dies. You're stuck with me for now, you won't live forever unless I do. Give me your power and you'll stave off death for another day. Who knows, maybe in the future you'll figure out a way to get free again. Wouldn't that be worth a little power that you'll never miss anyway?"

The demon's eyes narrowed and then turned away from him as though it were contemplating what he'd said. Naruto did his best to wait patiently for the Kyuubi to concede the point that it did want to continue living, even if that involved existing inside a human for the time being. He didn't think it was likely that Kyuubi would deny him what he was asking for, it never had in the past…

…of course, he realized with a start, what happened in the past didn't really apply to _this_ Kyuubi as it was from the future, just like he was, and it might not necessarily adhere to the timeline's script.

ooo

"Naruto!" Sakura screamed as the blond collapsed and didn't move.

Kamui stared down at the boy just long enough to confirm that his speedy trip to the gates of hell was irreversible and then stepped over the body as he stalked towards Sakura like a predatory animal approaching an easy meal. "I am sorry about your friend," he told her, sounding almost as though he meant it, "but he wasn't special, so I had no need of him. He should have known better than to get in our way… but you'll see him soon enough."

Sakura's eyes were as round as saucers as he advanced on her, his curved kunai still dripping with Naruto's blood. She wanted to run or hide or do something to save herself, but she couldn't move, she couldn't even breathe. Kamui would take Sasuke, she knew that now. Sasuke _was_ special, she'd heard that his clan had a kekkei genkai and certainly he'd proven over and over how incredible he was. And Kamui was going to take his abilities for himself. If Kakashi was too weak to keep up with her while they ran through the woods, what chance did he have against this man?

She couldn't let that happen, but what could she do against someone so powerful? He'd killed Naruto, he'd shown that he could heal after being injured, Kakashi had been burned just by touching him… he was on a whole different level from her! In fact, she wasn't sure she could even _see_ his level from where she was.

She shakily got to her feet and drew a kunai with her one good hand. The ache in her shoulder felt stronger now, as if her fear was allowing the pain to flow more freely throughout the rest of her body. She wanted to run and hid, to pretend that this wasn't happening, but she couldn't, not after what he'd done to Naruto, not while knowing that he was going to do the same or worse to Sasuke and Kakashi.

"I won't let you hurt Sasuke-kun and I'll get you back for what you did to Naruto!" she told him, though her voice was a higher pitch than normal and only served to further broadcast her fear.

Kamui stared down at Sakura impassively, his white eye seeming to stare right through her. "Well, at least you're brave enough to say something like that, even if you don't believe it," he said softly. "Unfortunately, you're just trash like that boy so it doesn't matter what you sa—"

Before he could finish, a crushing weight stronger than anything Sakura had ever felt before slammed down on them like a meteor from space. It was horrible… worse than horrible. It was the sort of blood lust that she'd read about, but never thought real. The killer intent was so palpable that images of her own death filled her head as the kunai in her fist turned shakily towards her own stomach. Without thinking, she'd prepared to turn it on herself just to make the horror stop.

Her eyes drifted to the ground, her legs grew weak, and suddenly she was on her knees, emptying the meager contents of her stomach onto the dirt road.

Sakura's vision swam before her eyes and she wanted to blackout, but then a voice that sounded vaguely familiar cut through the haze that seemed to have surrounded her brain.

"You don't know what special is!" it whispered with a guttural laugh.

Sakura's head moved as if she wanted to look up, but her eyes remained fixed on the patch of grass that she'd just puked all over. She didn't _want_ to see the sort of monster that could create this sort of feeling in her, she didn't want to know what was coming for them. But she had to. Sasuke was in danger and no matter how horrible Kamui might be, no matter how terrifying the thing was that was creating this weight on her chest, she couldn't let them hurt Sasuke… she couldn't let Kamui get away with killing Naruto!

Slowly she pushed herself to her feet, her eyes still firmly planted on the ground as she took a stumbling step to the side, and started to fall, but before she hit the ground two strong arms wrapped around her, steadying her.

"I've got you, Sakura-chan," Kakashi's voice called to her from a million kilometers away. Just knowing he was near her, and the safety that he represented, seemed to help lift the weight, not a lot, but enough to breath.

"Naruto," she whispered. "He's… I… he's d-dead."

Kakashi was quiet for a moment and then he said, "Don't worry, I'll take care of everything," as he lifted her up into his arms. She felt the air pass over her face as he ran and then leapt into the trees and carried her… somewhere, away from whatever it was that was back in the meadow, she hoped.

The trip was a short one and in no time at all he was setting her down next to the still-unconscious Sasuke who had been leaned against a tree that was on the edge of the small stream they had drank from during their break from guarding the caravan. To Sakura, the caravan mission seemed to have happened a hundred years ago. It was back when things still made sense, when they weren't in danger of being killed by missing-nin or monsters… when Naruto was still alive and Sasuke was nearly unbeatable and Kakashi was capable of keeping everyone safe.

She took a slow deep breath, trying to calm herself, and then reached a trembling hand up to brush Sasuke's hair away from his face. He looked so peaceful at that moment, as if he was just taking a nap in a beautiful forest.

_'What will he say when he finds out Naruto is dead,'_ she wondered. Her two teammates weren't normally the best of friends, but there were times, little moments when they thought no one – including each other – was watching, where she could see in their eyes that they enjoyed the other's company… it was especially obvious with Naruto, who often looked like he was forcing himself not to grin and throw his arm around Sasuke like they were brothers or something. Then, during the trip out here, they'd seemed to turn a corner. It seemed like Sasuke and Naruto had decided that they could openly be friends. She'd never seen Naruto looking as happy as he had that first night when they walked back into camp.

Naruto…

"Sakura-chan, watch Sasuke," Kakashi told her. "No matter what you hear or what happens, do not go back to the meadow, do you understand? I'm going to go get Naruto."

Sakura shook her head, sure that she'd misheard him. "Sensei… I… I saw it, Naruto… Naruto's dead!" It seemed like that every time she closed her eyes she saw it. Naruto turning to look at her, yelling for her to watch out, and then… his blood spraying everywhere. She barely even remembered what she'd been doing in the meadow in the first place or what she'd done before Naruto had been stabbed. None of it mattered, really. She couldn't focus on any of it besides the spray of blood that announced Naruto's death.

Kakashi gave her a stern look and for a moment she thought he was going to deny what she had seen with her own eyes, but then his face changed and he said, "I won't believe he's dead until I see it myself, but if he is, then I'm going to go avenge his death and recover his body. If I'm not back in ten minutes, you take Sasuke and make your way back to Konoha as quick as you can. Don't go to Kogane, don't go near anyone you don't know, and _don't_ go back to the meadow."

There was something in his voice – something that she thought sounded suspiciously like fear – that made her nod in agreement without any thought of questioning his plan as he headed back towards that nightmarish place. It didn't seem possible for her sensei to be afraid of anything, but she after what she'd felt a moment ago, it made sense for him to be afraid of what was in that meadow and for that reason alone she had no intention of going back there. She looked down at Sasuke and touched his face once more, letting her fingers brush against his lips… the closest thing to a kiss that she could bring herself to give him without his permission.

Then, with nothing else to do, she sat and watched the water as it strolled along its given path and tried not to think about anything that had happened so far that day. She was hurt, Sasuke was poisoned and unconscious, and Naruto…

Sakura's vision blurred as large, warm tears stung her eyes and then began rolling down her cheeks despite her best efforts to hold them at bay.

Naruto was dead.

ooo

"You don't know what special is," Naruto told Kamui in a raspy voice as a claw made of boiling red chakra snatched the missing-nin up by the throat, cutting him open, and threw him away from Sakura who was cowering on the ground. Naruto didn't spare her a second glance as he stalked after his prey. She wasn't ready to see him this way, yet.

He didn't want her to see him this way _ever_, a tiny part of his brain told himself. The dark thick marks on his cheeks, the red, inhuman eyes, the sharp fangs and claws, and the evil red chakra that swirled around him, forming almost a second skin. The rest of him ignored that part, ignored the danger that using Kyuubi's powers brought, ignored everything except for Kamui who was standing up once more, the gash across his neck already healed, his lone Byakugan activated and no doubt trying to figure out what sort of trick Naruto was using to transform himself.

Naruto smiled a wicked smile. He knew he shouldn't, but he was going to enjoy playing with his enemy this time around. "I happen to be friends with a couple of Hyuuga," he informed the man as he approached, two red, chakra tails swishing back and forth behind him. "I don't appreciate you killing their family members."

"W-what are you?" Kamui asked, finally looking scared.

Naruto drank the sight in, inhaling the intoxicating aroma of fear in the air, growing drunk on the man's terror. "The stuff of nightmares," he told him with a rumbling chuckle. He flexed the hand that he'd broken fighting Fudo, feeling the bones and tendons popping into place. "Does this make me special to you? Does it mean that I'm not trash like everyone else? Are you going to try to take my powers?"

Kamui backed away, unable to answer the challenge, and then turned to flee.

Naruto was already standing behind him an evil grin on his face. "You aren't getting away," he laughed, his tongue sliding hungrily over his long fangs. "I don't care how many times you heal yourself, I'll just keep killing you. You won't set one foot outside this area unless you're traveling in a body bag."

His hand flashed forward, fingernails that had lengthened into sharp claws racked across Kamui's face, spinning him around twice he hit the ground and was promptly kicked into the air. Naruto reached his hand out and an arm and clawed hand of pure chakra shot forward, catching Kamui in midair and then slamming him into the ground.

Naruto didn't bother attacking again. Kyuubi's chakra was sweeping through his system and he was drunk on the power. He wanted Kamui to get back up. He wanted the missing-nin to heal over and over so he could keep hurting him. He could, he realized probably kill Kamui for days if the ninja's healing powers could keep up the effort and Kamui deserved it. Actually, as far as Naruto was concerned, he deserved worse, but there wasn't time for that sort of thing and he wasn't totally sure that the desire for such gruesome torture was coming from his own feelings. It had been years since he'd let this much of the Kyuubi's unfiltered chakra into his system – outside of unsealing the bijuu in the battle against Orochimaru, which he didn't think should count since he'd been completely taken over… and then probably killed – and it was a little difficult to be sure which impulses were coming from him and which were due to the fox's chakra.

The Kamui climbed slowly to his feet and tried to run away once more, but before he could take more than three steps Naruto's hands plunged into the ground and a clawed hand of chakra popped out of the grassy meadow in front of Kamui and batted him back towards the red covered blond. Kamui rolled to his feet and looked up at the chakra hand and arm that seemed to wave in the breeze before him. He looked back at Naruto who stood calmly with his arms in the ground, his red eyes watching his prey.

Kamui tried running in a different direction, but that was way immediately cut off by another chakra arm. This time the missing-nin dodged the initial attack from it, but was unable to escape the one that came up on him from behind and raked across his back.

He frantically looked back and forth between the two monstrous red claws made of chakra, waiting for the next one to come at him. It came from the left again, but he saw it and rolled out of the way. The one on the right tried next, but his Byakugan saw the movement even though his head wasn't turned the right away and, again, he was too quick, pushing off the ground and flipping over deadly energy as it swiped at him. He was sweating and his eyes were shifting back and forth, searching for the hint of movement that would tell him where the next attack was coming from, but a small smile had appeared on his face. He'd realized that he could keep up with them, the potential to escape was still there, he would just have to be ready for it the moment the opening appeared.

Right? No. Left? No. Right? No. Left? No. The claws fainted towards him, but never moved the way they would when they actually attacked him. He knew it was coming though, he had to be ready… any second now one of them was going to come at him… as long as he kept looking back and forth, he would be ready…

"In your next life, don't mess with my village," Naruto's raspy, demonic voice hissed in his ear as Kamui heard a strange scrapping sound and then everything went black as it had so many times before. Always he had regenerated, healed from whatever wound be it to his eyes or a blow to the head. He could always recover… always.

He heard a strange thud, his body felt light… it was so odd… what was this feeling? His thoughts slipped away and this time they didn't immediately come back.

Naruto looked down at the severed head, waiting to see if the body could grow a new one or if the head was going to grow a new body. Either way he was prepared to deal with it. He didn't care if he had to turn the man into mulch to put an end his ridiculous recovery ability, Kamui wasn't going to live to see another day. Scum like him didn't deserve to live, didn't deserve to call themselves ninja.

It was almost a full minute before he saw it. The bleeding flesh on the portion of neck still attached to Kamui's head was shifting unnaturally. Even from this level of injury, it seemed, the man could regenerate. Quite the trick. It definitely eclipsed what Kyuubi could do for Naruto… or at least he thought it might. No one had ever cut off his head before, so it was hard to be sure. He watched the regrowth until it was obvious that it was the head that would be doing the healing and not the body. Cut off the head and the body dies, as the old axiom went, only in this case, the head just regrew a new body when the old one was dead.

Naruto's chakra covered fist slammed into Kamui's skull, turning the brain inside into paste. He pulled his hand back out and waited patiently for any signs of further regeneration. This time, there were none.

He'd been staring down at the decapitated and nearly hollowed out head for several minutes when he felt a lone eye upon his back. He glanced over his shoulder and tried to smile at Kakashi, but thought the effect was probably lost amidst the red, evil eyes and the fangs. Kakashi definitely didn't smile back.

"Naruto?" the jounin asked after a moment.

Naruto took several slow deep breaths before answering. "I'm still me."

It was hard to push Kyuubi back down once the power had come out and taken hold of him. It was like an addictive drug that you know is bad for you. You can see what it does to your life, but you just can't stop taking it, you need it even though it's killing you. In this case, however, Naruto didn't need the Kyuubi's power, at least not normally, but once it was in his blood, his body wanted more and more even though he knew what the consequences could be. He had to will his body to relax, to force that chakra back into the hole where it belonged.

Fortunately he'd had a couple of decades to practice and some very good teachers to help him.

"Is the seal…"

"No, its okay," he answered closing his eyes as the red chakra faded away and his facial features returned to normal. "It isn't getting out; I just took some of its power." With the power gone, his body suddenly felt more tired than it had since he woke up in the past. He swayed and nearly fell, but Kakashi was there to catch him.

"Are you okay?" he asked as he held gripped the blond's shoulders to keep him upright.

"Sorry, sensei," Naruto said with a tired sigh, "I'm just really tired all of a sudden."

Kakashi leaned over and gave his student a long, hard look in the eyes, probably trying to see if the Kyuubi had somehow taken over Naruto's mind, or if using its power was corrupting Naruto in some other way, or if using the power was killing Naruto by overtaxing his body. Whatever he was looking for, he apparently didn't find it because in the end, he simply nodded and then turned his attention to the beheaded Kamui, never releasing Naruto until the blond finally took a step away to prove that he was regaining his energy.

"Looks like you found something he couldn't heal."

"Yeah, but even after his head came off, he was still trying to grow a new body. I had to destroy the brain… I don't think he's healing from that one."

"This is the first time you've killed someone," Kakashi noted. "Are you alright?"

Naruto's eyes widened and he made a show of taking a deep breath and staring down at the ground. The truth was, he'd killed so many people over the years, he hadn't even thought about this being his first _official_ kill. It wasn't even the first time he'd killed since arriving in the past, unfortunately, but Kakashi wasn't allowed to know that and Naruto was supposed to be an inexperienced genin. If Kakashi hadn't mentioned it, Naruto wouldn't have realized the need to look as green as he was supposed to be.

"I'll be okay," he said in his best trying-to-be-brave voice. "It had to be done."

"You did well, Naruto," Kakashi told him, patting his shoulder. The touch was brief, but Naruto knew how meaningful it was. "You did really well. Ambushes are dangerous things, even the best ninja can lose their life when they are led into a trap, but you all proved yourselves beyond even my expectations. I'm proud to be your jounin-sensei."

Naruto looked up at Kakashi and smiled. It was even better than he'd hoped. Not only had they proven themselves to Kakashi, but apparently they'd done so well he was even more impressed with them than he had been after the Wave Country mission the first time around. There had been some rough patches, of course, but they'd gotten through it. This hadn't been the B Rank mission he'd thought it was. It should have been ranked A and might even have qualified as an S rank if Sayaka and Fudo had been a little more skilled or had been able to use their abilities better. Whatever the rank, Team Seven had kicked a couple of jounin or near jounin level missing-nins' asses. They were earning Kakashi's respect. They were sure to be entered into the Chuunin Exam. Things were looking up. He'd made up for – at least a little – screwing up his team's opportunity to get Tazuna's mission. He'd probably saved a couple of chuunin's lives by getting this mission for his team. He was making changes, not huge ones necessarily, but good ones. He was slowly building a better, brighter future. He was…

"Alright, let's head go find the others and explain to Sakura-chan that she _didn't_ see you get killed."

He was _screwed_!!

"Ah, damn it! I forgot all about that!" Naruto cursed as Kakashi steered him in the right direction.

Even dragging his heals a little, they reached the spot where Sakura and Sasuke were waiting far quicker than Naruto would have liked. Sakura's dirty face was streaked with tears and her pretty dress was bloody and torn, but she didn't look like there was much wrong with her that a short hospital visit and a nice bath wouldn't cure. Were he not so conscious of the fact that she'd basically seen him die, he might have even teased her about her appearance, especially with Sasuke right there to see her in all her filthy glory.

Sakura turned at the sound of their approach, instinctively reaching for her kunai holster, but stopped when she saw them. Her mouth fell open and her eyes went so wide they seemed to swallow up the rest of her face.

"N-Naruto!" she yelled as she leapt to her feet and tackled him, tears once more running down her face as she hugged him fiercely. Kakashi chose this moment to discretely head back towards the spots where the bodies of their enemies had fallen so he could hide the bodies until they could be retrieved for study and then to go to the caravan of rock filled wagons and collect his team's backpacks. "I-I can't believe it!" Sakura yelled into Naruto's ear, completely unaware of Kakashi's disappearance. "I… I saw you die, I thought…" she pushed back from Naruto and held a fist up in front of his face. "What the hell were you thinking, letting me think you'd gotten yourself killed?!"

Naruto knew the danger he was in, but wasn't sure how to extract himself from it. "Um… sorry?" Whatever he should have said, that apparently wasn't it.

"_Sorry_?! I thought you were dead and all you can say is _sorry_?" Sakura pulled back her fist and Naruto closed his eyes and braced himself, knowing that it might be a little deserved and hoping that, if nothing else, it would make Sakura feel better. Instead of the intense pain or the sudden loss of consciousness that were normally precipitated by Sakura flying into a rage, all he felt was a hand press against his cheek.

Naruto opened one eye and peeked at his teammate, and then opened both eyes to make sure the first wasn't playing tricks on him. Sakura had one hand cupping his cheek, her eyes sparkling with tears, and a smile on her face.

"I'm so glad you're okay," she told him with a choked sigh.

Naruto felt a bit embarrassed by the attention and wasn't sure how to react to this sort of Sakura after having spent weeks and months getting used to the other one. "Sorry I worried you," he said at last. "It was a genjutsu… I think… but I'm fine."

She nodded, accepting his explanation without question, which only shocked him more, considering that there were great bloody tears in his shirt and jacket where the "genjutsu" had made it appear that he'd been stabbed. Despite his surprise, he certainly wasn't going to complain about a potentially large and irritating problem slipping by the wayside without all the fuss that he'd expected.

With that out of the way, his attention turned to his other teammate who was still lying on the ground with his back propped up against a tree. "What happened to Sasuke?" he asked. He had the memories of Sayaka and Sasuke's fight, but his clone had released itself after Sasuke had taken care of the missing-nin. He'd known his friend was injured, but Sasuke should have been up and about by now.

Sakura swallowed hard, even more chocked up about this than she had been over Naruto's return from the dead. "That Sayaka-woman poisoned him," she explained. "Kakashi-sensei doesn't know if… _when_ he'll wake up."

Naruto stepped around her and hurried to Sasuke's side, touching his friend's neck to check his pulse and was relieved to find it strong. "How long has he been like this?"

"Fifteen minutes, maybe a little more," Sakura replied.

Naruto took a deep breath and stood up, his excitement over how well they'd done on the mission suddenly tasting sour in his mouth. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything he could do for Sasuke other than hope that things worked out. He knew next to nothing about poisons or medicines, other than that the first one made you sick or dead and the second made you better. It would have been nice if someone else from the future had come back with him – besides a detestable demon – so he could have a person with some medicinal knowledge to back him up, but that hadn't happened and there was no point in wishing for things that couldn't be.

"So what do we do now?" he asked.

"We start heading back, of course," Kakashi answered as he dropped from the trees above, four backpacks in his arms.

"Yeah, but Sasuke-kun…" Sakura started.

"…isn't going to get better lying around in the woods." Kakashi pointed out as he tossed her backpack to her – she caught it awkwardly with her uninjured arm. "We'll head back towards Konoha and probably meet a medic-nin along the way. If he isn't better by tomorrow, we'll stop and wait."

"How are we going to find a medic-nin?" Sakura asked, confused. She tried to put the backpack on, but was unable to get it over her injured shoulder. Naruto stepped over and took it from her, earning himself a thankful smile.

In answer to Sakura's question, Kakashi's fingers flashed together, moving so fast it was difficult to even see what he was doing – though Naruto could guess what the plan was, and then placed his hand on the ground as dark seals spread out from his palm and a small cloud of smoke appeared as if he'd just destroyed an invisible shadow clone. When the smoke cleared a large, yellow furred dog with a blue vest, Leaf hitai-ate around his neck, and (for some reason) sunglasses was sitting patiently in front of Kakashi.

Naruto had seen and even talked to Kakashi's ninken often enough before the jounin's death to be able to remember that the dog's name was Isamu and that he was strangely insistent on being referred to either by name or by breed, Shikoku, rather than as "dog" or "doggie." For some reason the other seven of Kakashi's dogs didn't seem to care about it much, though Pakkun usually tried to add an adjective like "cute" or "adorable" whenever he was called "dog." Isamu pointed out that he didn't call Naruto or anyone else "primate" – or even just "human" once he knew who they were – so why should they be allowed to get away with it with him… the dog was weird, that was all, weird and sort of serious. Pakkun and Bull were much more fun to talk to, though it was usually a good idea to wear a raincoat whenever Bull was speaking.

"Hey Kakashi," Isamu said as his lips pulled back in something approximating a smile, "been a while since you've called me."

"Sorry about that," the jounin replied.

Sakura looked from the dog to Kakashi and then over at Naruto who was trying to tie her backpack to his so he could carry both at once. "The dog talked!" she informed him needlessly.

Naruto looked up from his work and shrugged. "So?"

"You don't think that's strange?"

Naruto frowned thoughtfully and then shook his head. "Not really." It was fun to tease her, though he had to work hard not to laugh at the funny expression on her face. Just looking at her he could see her mind coming up with all sorts of reasons why the Isamu's ability to speak was both 'strange' and completely impossible.

Before Sakura could share her thoughts, Kakashi said in a voice loud enough to get her to be quiet, "I need you to run ahead of us to Konoha and explain to Hokage-sama that the mission was a trap. We need at least one team of ANBU out here to collect three bodies with multiple kekkei genkai – including a Byakugan – and also to see about apprehending Kogane's mine foreman, Hanbei, in connection with the ambush. The bodies will be hidden in the usual fashion, as long as an Inuzuka is invited along they'll be easy enough to find. In addition to that, tell him that Uchiha Sasuke has been poisoned by an unknown substance. He's in stable condition so far, but we need a medic-nin to meet us during our return trip. We'll be heading towards Konoha along the most direct route, so they shouldn't have any trouble finding us."

Isamu nodded, turned his head towards Sakura and gave her what might have been a reproachful glare behind his sunglasses – Naruto suspected this was for the comment about his speaking ability being strange, though it might have had to do with her calling him a dog – and then took off through the woods at high speed.

Kakashi watched until Isamu was out of sight and then lifted his own backpack as well as Sasuke's onto his shoulders. "Shall we head home then?" he asked cheerfully as if they'd been on a stroll in the woods rather than fighting for their lives. The two genin nodded and he picked up Sasuke and the three of them began the long trip home.

After only a couple of hours of travel, Naruto commented on wishing they could have been the ones to deal with Hanbei, rather than leaving him to ANBU. Kakashi pointed out that they had more important things to do, such as getting Sasuke back to Konoha in case the poison was more serious than it seemed, but Naruto waved that off as the jounin's excuse to be lazy.

It was supposed to be a joke to lighten the mood, Sakura especially was far too somber considering what they'd just accomplished, but Kakashi seemed to take it a bit personally. After agreeing that he was actually feeling a little tired and "lazy," Kakashi decided that he needed a break from carrying so much extra weight and passed both Sasuke's limp body and the dark haired boy's backpack to Naruto… followed shortly by his own backpack which was also deemed "a bit on the heavy side."

Naruto struggled under the new load for nearly a mile before concluding that Kakashi's little joke wasn't going to end any time soon. For the rest of the afternoon, Kakashi and Sakura had to deal with five Narutos – each with his own burden to bear after Naruto decided that carrying both his and Sakura's backpacks on one body was more effort than it was worth – and the subsequent noise that came with them. Fortunately for everyone, Sasuke groggily came to his senses just as they were about to make camp for the evening. The rest of the trip passed without incident as the genin, mostly Sakura and Naruto, reveled happily in their grand success on their first dangerous mission.

o

o

A/N: Now that I think about it, I don't remember Sakura being shocked when Pakkun talks during the Sound Invasion arc. Still, it seems like someone should be a bit surprised, and she is still a fairly new genin at this point, so hopefully her naivety can be forgiven this once. Plus, she didn't hit Naruto! That deserves an extra helping of forgiveness, I think. In fact, that little moment right there between her and Naruto is one of my favorites in the whole chapter, so it definitely should make up for her possibly noncanon confusion.

Anyway, well, that's finally over with. Hopefully you all enjoyed this arc even if it was a forgone conclusion that everyone would make it out fairly safe and sound (it would have been almost funny to read people's reactions if I killed off someone like Kakashi or even Sasuke… maybe if April Fool's day fell on a Friday I would have gone through with it for one day and then put up the _real_ chapter. I have to admit, I've been itching to post this chapter since about… oh, Tuesday. I had it basically done and the one after it was pretty much finished as well. The only thing that kept me from doing it was the fact that what's posted is rapidly closing in on the rough drafts sitting in my computer and I don't think I'm ready to start trying to type whole chapters out in one week. It'll happen eventually – and then we'll see if I can actually keep up the chapter a week pace – but I'd like to put it off as long as possible. In this case, I was just really excited about being done with this arc and wanted to see what everyone thought of the final fight here.

Please review and let me know what you thought.

Katon: Dokugiri Shou (Fire Release: Burning Poison Mist) – this is a combination of two jutsu found in the series: Asuma's Haisekishou (Burning Ash Cloud) and Shizune's Dokugiri (Poison Mist). I don't know if I combined them correctly (grammatically speaking), as I don't know Japanese, but it's probably close enough for my purposes… especially since this fic is in English and all.

Ninken (Ninja Dogs) – These are Kakashi's summons (as well as the Inuzuka clan's partners) for those who don't know, though I doubt there was much confusion.

Isamu – Kakashi's dog with the sunglasses doesn't, too my knowledge at least, have a name yet, so I gave him one. Isamu means "courageous" or "warrior" which seems like a decent name for a ninken to have. I have no idea what breed he might actually be, but Shikoku are a Japanese breed of dog that bear a resemblance to him as he's depicted in the anime… Shikoku have curly tails though, which I don't think Kakashi's dog has… oh well, close enough, he probably wasn't supposed to be a specific type of dog anyway.


	20. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

o

Naruto yawned and stretched as he leaned against his little stove and waited impatiently for the water to boil so he could make his breakfast. It hadn't really been a long trip back from Kogane, but they didn't get in until late and the debriefing had made it even later before he'd finally gotten to return home and collapse into his wonderfully comfortable – at least in comparison to the ground – bed and fall asleep. Due to the late hour, he hadn't even gotten a chance to eat dinner before giving into his fatigue. He'd woken to the feeling of his stomach complaining about the skipped meal and found the sky outside dark and the village quiet. It was much earlier than he'd planned on getting up, but since he was wide awake anyway, he figured he'd go and see if Hinata was up and interested in training.

Of course, if his body had let him sleep in the way he wanted to, he wouldn't have gotten out of bed until close to noon, but training with Hinata would be fun. Plus, he had the day off, so it wasn't like he had anything better to do and he could always take a nap later if he felt the need.

Once the water was boiling, he poured it into his cup of noodles and inhaled the sweet aroma that drifted up as the water worked its magic on the dried ramen. It wasn't, strictly speaking, a healthy breakfast – Sakura used to scold him almost weekly when she would catch him eating such heavy food in the morning – but he had three very good reasons that were more than enough for him to overlook the questionable nutritional value of the meal: first, he was hungry; second, the thought of ramen made his mouth water; and third, he didn't have anything else in the apartment to eat. Besides, he'd grown to be plenty tall and healthy the first time around, so it couldn't be _that_ bad for him.

When the ramen was ready, he climbed through a window and sat down outside on his little balcony, happily slurping his noodles and enjoying the way the steam warmed his face. The village was eerily peaceful at this time of day, but it was nice to enjoy the quiet every once in a while, especially after a fairly long and stressful mission.

Sasuke had woken about five or six hours after they'd set out for home, just an hour or two before they'd planned on making camp for the night. He hadn't been pleased to find himself being carried by a Naruto (there were five of them on the path at the time) when he woke and a little teasing about being the only one incapacitated during the fighting probably hastened his recovery time. He was groggy for a while, unable to walk steadily on his own without leaning on someone and struggling with the weight of the backpack he insisted on carrying, but he recovered enough to hide any discomfort or dizziness after an hour or so. Sakura had seemed disappointed when he no longer needed to lean on her – a job she had quickly volunteered for after Naruto declared that he wasn't carrying someone who was awake – but she managed to refrain from making too much of a fuss over him.

The rest of the trip had been almost relaxing. They talked about the mission, telling each other what had happened while they were separated, and wondered whether or not Hanbei would be smart enough to leave town before the ANBU forces arrived and taught him what a bad idea it was to submit false mission requests intended to lead ninja into traps. Naruto and Sakura thought that he might not have even gone back to town afterwards, but Sasuke pointed out that he was probably expecting to get paid and would be waiting around for one of the missing-nin to give him his reward. Naruto wished he could be there to see Hanbei get the _reward_ he'd earned, no one disagreed with him with he mentioned it to the group.

There had been a tense moment – for Naruto, at least – when Sasuke asked him how he'd done during his fight. He considered lying and giving all of the credit to Kakashi, but decided against it, especially since Kakashi was right there and might contradict any misinformation given unless it involved _the_ _big secret_. Plus it wasn't like he didn't want Sasuke to see him as an equal earlier on than the first time around to both lessen the shock of his development during and after the Chuunin Exam (especially since he had no reason to hold back once they reached the second test) and to encourage Sasuke to come to him for help when he needed it. So he told his teammates _almost_ everything that happened, only leaving out the Kyuubi parts and making it sound like he had been able to use shadow clones to overwhelm Kamui and cut off his head.

Sasuke absorbed the news of Naruto's victory over the leader of their foes in silence and remained quiet for a while afterwards. Naruto had just started to fear that he'd made a miscalculation when his friend gave him a smirk and said, "With the way you handle a kunai, it's a miracle you didn't miss and cut your own hand off or something." It was condescending, of course, but there was no malice in the Uchiha's voice, just a hint of friendly teasing.

Naruto had never been so relieved in his life… with the exception of the point where he realized that he truly was in the past and not in some sort of genjutsu. Sasuke really was finally coming around, Sakura was farther along than she'd been before the Chuunin Exam the first time, and Kakashi had said he was proud of them… everything was going nearly perfectly.

And now he was quietly enjoying the greatest food ever invented in the most wonderful place he'd ever been. The peace wouldn't last, of course, since the Chuunin Exam would be coming up pretty soon and he had to kill Orochimaru (along with a lot of other people, probably) to make sure that things really and truly went the way he wanted them to, but for the first time in a long time he wasn't quite as worried about what was coming.

Life was just going too well for it to not all work out in the end.

ooo

Kakashi stood in front of the large doors and let out a small sigh. He was both dreading and longing for this meeting. On the one hand, he didn't want to have to admit what he'd been seeing and thinking about one of his students, but on the other, things had gotten to the point where he needed advice and also to inform the Third about a potentially dangerous problem.

_'Forgive me, sensei,' _he thought as he knocked softly and then stepped inside, _'but I don't have a choice anymore.'_

Inside he found Sarutobi Hiruzen sitting at his desk looking over a small pile of paper work. The room smelled faintly of coffee and tobacco, the former probably having come from the early morning routine of the old man (there was a mug on his desk even now) while the later was a lingering scent that had soaked into the woodwork after all these years.

"Forgive the early hour, Hokage-sama," Kakashi said as the Third looked up and beckoned him forward with a small wave of his hand, "but I think we might have a problem and I didn't want to bring it up in front of my team or Iruka."

The Third sighed and reached for his pipe and tobacco. Kakashi politely waited in silence while the tobacco was packed into the bowl, pressed down with practiced precision, and then lit. After taking a couple of short, quick puffs on the pipe, the old man leaned back in his chair and let the smoke slide out of his mouth, curling up in front of his face as it drifted towards the ceiling. "What has Naruto done?" he asked at last.

Kakashi felt the temptation to hesitate before answering, but resisted. "The report I submitted to you last night was not wholly accurate." At Sarutobi's raised eyebrow he quickly clarified, "We did defeat the enemy and Naruto was the one who landed the killing blow against their leader, but…" he took a deep breath and then pushed ahead with what he knew he had to say, "Naruto used the Kyuubi's powers. He transformed, at least partially, into a sort of… mini-Kyuubi."

The Third let out another mouthful of smoke and inhaled the aroma through his nose. "Tell me exactly what happened." His voice was calm, without a hint of accusation or annoyance, but there was no denying that it was a direct order that was expected to be obeyed instantly.

And Kakashi did obey. He explained about Sakura thinking that Naruto was dead, about seeing a transformed Naruto attack Kamui, about the palpable bloodlust he'd felt in the meadow, and about returning after rescuing Sakura and finding Naruto standing over the decapitated body, still surrounded by the strange red chakra. Throughout his story, the Third did not ask for clarification nor make any sound whatsoever. He simply sat still, listening intently, and thoughtfully smoked his pipe.

When Kakashi was done, Sarutobi nodded slowly and then dumped the contents of his pipe out into a small bowl on his desk and began packing the pipe again. "He said that he was still himself?"

"That's right. He claimed that he only borrowed some of the Kyuubi's power, but that the seal hadn't been broken."

"Do you believe him?"

Kakashi thought about it for a moment, wanting to assure himself of his own feelings before answering, but found that he wasn't sure he even _knew_ the answer. "Maybe," he said.

"A noncommittal answer if ever there was one," the Third noted with a smile, "but there's more that you want to add."

Kakashi nodded and readied himself for the part of the conversation that he was least looking forward to. "He's not the Naruto I read about in the Academy reports or that you told me about before you gave me this team. He still screws up sometimes, but…" his voice trailed away as he realized something that had been building in the back of his mind for the past few weeks. "I don't know if I can trust him."

The Third's eyebrows rose considerably at this statement. "Why not? You know as well as I do the sort of prejudice held against him, even by the instructors at the Academy. It can't be that big of a surprise to find that their assessment of him was… misleading."

"It's not that," Kakashi insisted. He wished that he'd brought his concerns up earlier now. Just speaking about them was helping to clarify issues that had been bogged down with emotional attachments in his mind. "When I first met him, he was a clumsy idiot. He could barely even walk down the street without tripping and he looked at everything as if he were seeing it for the first time. Then, after we became Team Seven, he gradually improved until some of his mistakes started looking intentional."

"He was sabotaging the team?"

"No," Kakashi shook his head quickly, "more like he was forcing the others…" He paused as a new connection formed, "No, he was forcing _Sasuke_ to rescue them. It wasn't all the time, but every once in a while I knew he'd messed up on purpose no matter how much he claimed the mistake wasn't his fault or apologized for it."

"Why would he do such a thing?"

"I don't know, but it goes beyond just that. Jutsu he sometimes uses, taijutsu stances he slips in and out of by mistake, his ability to create literally hundreds of shadow clones…"

"We both know that Naruto is… _inventive_… with jutsu and his exceptional ability to use Kage Bunshin no Jutsu probably stems from the Kyuubi within him. Even taijutsu could be mimicked by watching older ninja train, none of those things are terribly out of the ordinary," the Third pointed out.

"Do any of those things explain why he would be training Hyuuga Hinata in the mornings? I looked up her test scores, she was miles ahead of him in the Academy."

Sarutobi smiled. "He's been working with Hinata, has he?" The old man chuckled, sending smoke out his nostrils in little puffs. "Hiashi-san will be pleased when he finds out, I'm sure. Kurenai's reports on Hinata have been practically glowing for the past two weeks, so it seems that Naruto must be doing a good job."

Kakashi nodded thoughtfully. He could see that the Third was playing devil's advocate, not simply brushing Kakashi's concerns aside, but there was more and he didn't think even the devil himself would excuse the bomb he was preparing to drop. "When we first confronted the missing-nin, Naruto tried to kill Kamui. After he healed, Naruto called him a '_jinchuriki_.'"

This did the trick. The momentary confusion was apparent on the Third's face and then he began slowly chewing the metal mouth piece of his pipe. "He used the word 'jinchuriki'?"

"Yes."

Sarutobi set his pipe down on a little plate on his desk and rested his chin on his folded hands. "It's doubtful that Naruto would be aware of more people in his… particular situation. He didn't even find out about the Kyuubi until the day he became a genin. Of course, it might not be difficult to guess that it could have happened to others… even if there's never been any solid proof of another village attempting such a thing." He rose and looked out the window at the village as it slowly woke from its evening slumber. "So, if he's not Naruto, or not the Naruto that we expect him to be, what is he?"

"I have no idea, that's the problem," Kakashi admitted. "If he acted violently towards his teammates, I might think that he was somehow a disguised infiltrator from another village, but the only time I've seen him raise a hand to Sasuke or Sakura is during sparring sessions and even then he takes more than he gives. In fact, the only time he's had a solid victory was when he realized that Sasuke was doing a new form wrong and tried to point it out. On top of that, the Kyuubi is definitely inside of him, so he has to be Naruto, and the only thing he's done wrong is mess up on some harmless missions and disappear for a day after he'd been sick. The one time we were really in any danger, he went above and beyond what could be expected of a genin to help protect the rest of the team."

"What are your other theories?"

"He might be in contact with the Kyuubi somehow or maybe he's always been this good and was just waiting to show everyone – given who his father was, that can't be ruled out. Or maybe he really is somehow working for an enemy village and needs to earn our total trust before turning on us… after the treatment he received from the village, even that isn't totally beyond the realm of possibility."

The Third frowned and then turned and looked up at the pictures of the four Hokages that hung above his desk, his eyes noticeably lingering on the one of the young man with long blond hair that had been both his successor and, tragically, his predecessor. "Keep a careful eye on him," he said softly. "Bijuu sealings aren't a well studied discipline, it's possible that Naruto is being corrupted from the inside or perhaps – though I think it very unlikely – he has betrayed us. Keep in mind, however, that for every theory that paints him in a negative light, there is another, often simpler, one in which he is simply growing up to be what his father intended of him. Regardless, keep me informed on what you find."

Kakashi nodded and bowed before turning to leave. He'd hoped for more definitive advice than to just keep watching him, but hadn't expected any more than what he'd gotten. In a way, it was a relief that the Third hadn't wanted Naruto brought in for questioning. Something like that could ruin Naruto's relationships with his teammates and might have forced Kakashi to stop giving him the benefit of the doubt. He could only imagine how things would have gone if Obito had been pulled off their team for some reason. No doubt he would have remained just as stuck up and serious as Sasuke often was and Rin would have been not all that unlike Sakura's personality when they first became a team.

A thought struck him as he reached the door. He stopped and looked over his should. "You know, this team is very much like my old team under Minato-sensei…"

Sarutobi Hiruzen picked up his pipe and relit it, before taking another puff. "Is it now?" he asked with a chuckle and a knowing smile. "I'm always amazed at what interesting coincidences life brings our way."

ooo

"Good morning, Hinata-chan!" Naruto called out loudly, disregarding the early hour and the fact that those living in the nearby buildings were probably either still asleep or only just waking at this point in the day, as Hinata stepped through the gates to the Hyuuga compound and gave him a small, shy smile.

The Branch member guarding the gate bowed to her, though his eyes remained on Naruto. Hinata could see the displeasure in his eyes and guessed that he didn't appreciate his quiet morning being disturbed by the blond ninja who tended to be loud regardless of what time of day it was. It was hard not to smile at how irritating seemingly everyone thought Naruto was. If only they knew how amazing he really was, they wouldn't judge him so harshly. Until the rest of the village woke up and realized the truth, however, she was privileged to be one of the select few who was in the know and that felt… nice.

The man caught her looking at him and instantly noted the tiny smile on her face. He quickly schooled his emotions and bowed a little deeper to her before straightening and returning to his post.

"How are y-you this morning, Naruto-kun?" she asked turning her attention to her friend. She'd practiced talking to him in her mirror at night when no one was around to hear her, trying to work out her stuttering so she didn't sound so pathetic all of the time.

"Tired," he told her with a small yawn. "We didn't get back in until late last night."

"I'm sor—" she started to say before catching herself as Naruto brought a finger up to poke at her. The last thing she needed was for someone to see Naruto poke her in the head and scold her as if she were a mischievous toddler. At best it would make her look bad in the eyes of her family, at worst, it could result in Naruto being attacked by the guard. "Um, I mean… you should have slept in. You… you didn't have to come if… if you needed more s-sleep." She still had a ways to go in the stuttering department, but Naruto, as ever, didn't seem to mind or even notice.

Naruto yawned again as he started walking towards the training grounds they normally used. "Sleep is boring. Besides, I have the day off, I can rest later."

"O-okay, Naruto-kun." Hinata fell into step just slightly behind him, an unintentional act of subservience that had long been drilled into her in her household.

Naruto slowed so that she would catch up, but she automatically adjusted to keep herself just behind his shoulder. "Are you doing that on purpose?" he asked after a second attempt yielded the same results.

"D-doing what, Naruto-kun?"

"You're walking behind me," he pointed out.

"S-sorr—ouch!" Naruto poked her in the side of the head just as they rounded a corner.

"Don't apologize," he reminded her, "and don't walk behind me like that. It makes me feel like… I don't know, like I'm you're boss or something."

Hinata nodded and increased her pace until they were side by side, her face burning. It would have been a bad thing if her father or one of the Elders had seen her walking like that with Naruto. Whether she felt inferior to him or not, the fact was that in terms of social rank she was about as far above him as the clouds were above the Earth and should never act otherwise… not until he became the Hokage, anyway. With the confidence and proficiency that he seemed to have gained since graduation, she had little doubt that he would get there in record time.

"Thanks," he said with a large grin as she pulled up next to him and then changed the subject to one she'd hoped he would avoid. "So, how'd training with your dad go? Did you kick Hanabi's butt?"

"N-no… not… not really," she replied.

The truth of the matter was that she _had_ done well against Hanabi, at least at first. She'd done her best to block out her father's presence, pretending that he was just one of Naruto's clones, and then she'd even caught her sister off guard twice by doing something that she considered "unpredictable" just as Naruto had told her she should. She hadn't done anything too off the wall, of course, but two of her strikes had been partial breaks in form, coming when Hanabi was clearly not expecting them – a clear sign that she had been sticking to rigidly to the Juuken katas in previous sparring sessions. She'd been elated at first, but one look at her father's face had told her that he wasn't as impressed as she'd hoped he would be. With the reminder that he was _not_ one of Naruto's clones, her confidence broke down. Things had gone down hill from there and the usual outcome was the ultimate result.

When the match was over, her father had been strangely displeased with Hanabi for allowing herself to be caught off guard and made her go and practice with a Branch member while Hinata worked on form. He hadn't exactly praised Hinata's efforts – she'd lost, after all – but he also hadn't had quite as many negative things to say about her performance as he normally did.

Hinata wasn't sure what it meant. Hanabi had never been made to do extra work beyond the training that she already did with their father and with other Hyuuga trainers. Normally she was praised – in a stern, calm voice that would lead most non-Hyuuga to believe that the 'praise' was just more instruction – for her abilities, especially after defeating her older sister time and time again. It was sort of nice to hear what seemed to be fewer criticisms of her performance, but getting Hanabi in trouble wasn't what she'd wanted to do. She just wanted to keep herself from being seen as such a failure in her father's eyes.

Naruto gave her an encouraging smile and kindly didn't ask her to tell the story, in fact, after the smile, he hardly said anything. They walked for several minutes in silence before Hinata chanced a glance at him. His eyes were to the ground, seemingly glazed over, his lips curved downward in a frown and the small wrinkling of his forehead could be seen through the blond locks that were not held back by a hitai-ate this morning. She couldn't imagine what it was that he was thinking so hard about, but made sure to walk as quietly as a shadow the rest of the way so she wouldn't disturb his thoughts.

When they arrived at the training grounds Naruto had her show him her tree climbing skills. Before he'd left on his mission, he'd told her he wanted to see how "awesome a tree climber" she would be when he returned. Hinata knew that he was only trying to encourage her, but such was her desire to prove her worth to him that she had spent nearly every morning while he was gone working at it until her legs could take no more – even after it was clear by the second day that she had the skill down perfectly.

She immediately headed for the closest tree and walked up it without pause or effort. When she reached as high as the tree would support her weight, she turned and walked back down almost as easily. Naruto cheered for her once she was on the ground and congratulated her on the speed with which she had mastered it, telling her that it had taken him almost a month to get as good as she had gotten in about two weeks' time. Hinata was certain that this was an exaggeration, but his praise caused her stomach to flip-flop pleasantly making it impossible to voice her denial… which was good, because he probably would have poked her forehead if she'd let it slip out.

Once his crowing over her success died down, Naruto grew serious and didn't say anything for a long time. He seemed, to Hinata, to be trying to make a very difficult decision, though she had no clue what it could be about.

Finally he sighed resignedly and said, "Hinata-chan, I want to teach you something, but I don't want you to tell anyone where you learned it, got it?"

"Why?"

He visibly winced at the question. "Well… it just would be better if you left me out of it. So if someone asks, you made it up yourself, okay?"

Hinata frowned in confusion and then said, "Naruto-kun, I… I don't understand."

He rubbed his eyes and then pinched the bridge of his nose as he let out another sigh, giving her the distinct impression that he still wasn't totally sure about his decision and wished she'd just make the promise so he could get whatever it was over with. "Just promise me that if anyone asks where you learned it, you'll tell them you made it up yourself. I know it's lying and that you don't really like to lie, but I barely know the basics of it, so you'll have to figure most of it out on your own, anyway."

"What is it?"

He opened his mouth to reply, but then shut it and shook his head. "No, you have to promise me first… but if you can figure it out, I think it'll help you a lot… maybe. The, uh, guy I got it from… well, he pretty much kicked ass like you wouldn't believe, so I think it'll help."

Hinata forced herself to look him in the face and take in his features. All Hyuuga were trained on reading the subtle clues that nearly every person unconsciously allowed to appear on their face. A shift in the eyes, a twitch of a muscle around the nose, a small tremble in the lip, even the nearly invisible ripple of the forehead, all of them told a piece of a story that a Hyuuga master could read. Having the Byakugan active made the reading much easier, of course, but even without it and with barely adequate competency at the skill, the clues were there for the eye trained to see them. Naruto was hiding something, a secret he didn't want to share… and he was feeling a little guilty about something as well.

His eyes met hers and suddenly the clues that had been skirting across his face faded a bit, either because he was consciously trying to force them down or because she was suddenly distracted by the blue of his irises.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" he asked with a knowing smile and a wink that made Hinata blush and look away.

He'd caught her, but it didn't matter, she'd already seen what she needed to see. Naruto _wasn't_ telling the whole truth, or at least he was hiding something he felt was important. She could, had she the courage, call him on it and see if he would tell her, but she didn't have the courage and she didn't want to pry where he didn't want her. In the end, it came down to two questions: Did she trust Naruto? and Was she willing to lie for him?

The answer to the first question was an emphatic yes, but the second one…

Hinata took a deep breath and then took the plunge. "I-I won't tell anyone that you taught me. I-I promise."

Naruto smiled, looking relieved. "Alright then, watch close and I'll show you the form."

Hinata watched carefully, confused at first, but as he looped through the motions over and over her eyes began to widen. He'd been right when he said that he only knew the basics, there was a distinct roughness in everything he did and from time to time his arms and legs didn't flow the way she thought they should have. It was like he knew parts of what his body was supposed to be doing, but had gaps in his knowledge that he was being forced to adlib through. Regardless of what he didn't know, slowly Hinata began to see the intent behind it, to see directions it could be taken, ways that it could be refined. It was very similar to Juuken, but with important differences, some of which she thought looked like natural, obvious improvements on the form she'd been taught was already perfect, while others must have been attached to purposes that she didn't understand.

Somehow, somewhere, Naruto had come across an unrivaled genius. Her eyes could see in the blond's movements that he was mimicking something he'd seen over and over, but not officially been taught. And yet, he knew enough to open her eyes to what could be done with it.

Naruto didn't have the Byakugan and he couldn't use Juuken, but what he was showing her… it had been created for the hands and eyes of a Hyuuga.

Hinata sat and watched Naruto for what felt like hours as he continuously moved about the training grounds, his feet easily sliding through the damp grass and dirt and his arms almost always in motion. After a while, sweat was running from his brow and he was starting to breathe harder, but she hardly noticed. She didn't stop him or talk to him until the sun had risen over the tops of the trees, telling them that it was time for her to go and meet her team. Even then, she didn't say anything to him, her mind was far too busy to concentrate on something so trivial as speech or manners, she barely even had the cognitive ability left over to realize that she needed to hurry or she would be late.

Naruto didn't interrupt her thoughts; he simply smiled at her, nodded, and then headed for home, his feet dragging in a way that told her he was exhausted, but, as horrifying as it would later be for her to realize, she didn't care about his fatigue. Her eyes saw only the taijutsu form that he'd just demonstrated.

ooo

Sasuke stared out the window of his large apartment and watched the sun rising over the village. He felt strange, inside, confused even, but he couldn't put his finger on why. It had started… he wasn't sure when it had started, but the feeling had grown more intense after he'd let Naruto help him learn the tree climbing technique. Just thinking about his blond teammate or about Sakura seemed to increase the effect.

Maybe it had started when Sakura asked if she could train with him after Kakashi dismissed them. At the time, he'd thought it was just another attempt to get him to go out with her or to convince him to ask her to be his girlfriend or whatever it was she used to want with him, but to his great surprise she never did anything other than asking for his help with different techniques or helping him when something required two people… though he knew that she wouldn't have said no to any of those other things either. She said she just wanted to help him get stronger – and to get stronger herself, of course – that she wanted to be useful to him so that she could be there for him when he needed her.

Sasuke had seriously doubted that there would _ever_ be a time when he would need anyone other than himself and, if there was, it would only be a sign that he wasn't strong enough yet. Still, once he'd gotten used to her presence, there had been something… _nice_… about having Sakura train with him. It reminded him of the way things were before _that_ night, back when he was allowed to enjoy himself and the work hard for the pleasure of being the best. It wasn't like those times he'd tried to tag along with Itachi when his brother had practiced kunai throwing or taijutsu in the woods, but there were similarities in how it sometimes made him feel.

And then there was Naruto. Uzumaki Naruto, the dead-last, the dumbass, the loser, the worst ninja in the Academy, the kid so annoying he had to paint monuments and pull pranks just to get people to look at him. He wasn't that Naruto anymore; there was more to him than that – just as Sakura had once said there was. And just like Sakura, he'd come right out and proclaimed that he wanted to help Sasuke get stronger in anyway that he could. That he wanted to be there to watch Sasuke's back when he needed it or cheer him on from the sidelines when he didn't.

It was like they were all… friends.

That was it. That was the feeling. Friends. Sakura and Naruto were becoming his friends, they _wanted_ to be his friends and not just because he was wealthy or good looking or had a tragic past that fit into some girlish fantasy… they actually seemed to like him for him….

Normally.

'_Is that what we are now? Friends?_' Sasuke wondered as he reached out and let his hand rest on the glass in front of him, feeling it warm under his touch. '_Is Naruto my friend now because we were able to talk on the trip to and from Kogane, because he helped me figure out the tree climbing? Is Sakura my friend because she managed to talk me into letting her train with me and I haven't _totally_ hated it? Are those things enough to make us friends?_'

It was deeper than that and he knew it, especially with Naruto. His blond teammate had always been a dumbass, but he'd also always been the only one of their peers who could understand the loneliness that Sasuke had felt since _that_ night. Naruto was the only person who really knew something of how Sasuke felt and Sasuke was the only one who knew something of how Naruto felt. Others might understand some of what they were going through, or sympathize with their plight, but few if any had felt the total isolation that they'd had to survive to get this far. Sasuke was isolated by his genius and the tragedy of his family. Naruto was isolated because of his antics, the fact that he was an orphan, and the way the older villagers treated him. They were different, but the same… or close to the same anyway.

And now Naruto wasn't such an idiot. He could also be smart and strong and even insightful when the mood struck him. There was no longer as wide a difference in their abilities as had been there in the past. Naruto's skills weren't totally eclipsed by Sasuke's… maybe not even eclipsed at all. Certainly, if there was a gap between their abilities, it was a small one that was closing – rapidly closing, Sasuke thought – and feelings of friendship were able to bridge what remained of it.

Without any words calling attention to it, without any handshakes, or hugs, or any of that nonsense, Naruto was becoming Sasuke's best friend. Sakura was too, for that matter, though there were differences in how he felt about the two of them.

So what did that mean?

Sasuke knew what it meant, or what it _could_ mean. It _could_ mean that if he killed Naruto or even Sakura, he could gain the Mangekyo Sharingan as compensation. He could reach the heights that Itachi had achieved. Perhaps that was even the secret to surpassing Itachi…

The question was: could he bring himself to do it? Could he throw away either of the people who were becoming his best friends in order to gain his revenge? Would it be worth it?

He hated himself for not being able to answer those two questions with an emphatic "No," but he wasn't sure that his hatred was stronger than his desire to kill Itachi.

Sasuke turned away from the window and looked down at the long shadow that stretched across his bedroom floor. It wasn't hard to imagine it as his brother's shadow, still reaching back from that night to keep a strangle hold on Sasuke's life…

ooo

Sakura smiled contentedly as she enjoyed the second helping of breakfast her mother put in front of her. Their trip back from Kogane had been hurried, first by Sasuke's condition, and then by the fact that they were already pretty close and there was no point in taking an extra day. They'd arrived home late, of course, and had missed out on dinner after having suffered through several meals of rations while they traveled. Now that she was home and had the day off, she as going to make them most of it, starting with getting a solid meal of well cooked food in her stomach.

"So, how was your trip?" her mother, Haruno Chiru, asked sitting down next to her. Sakura's mother was what her father referred to – when her mother was out of earshot – as 'pleasantly plump.' She had the look of a woman who was once more slender, but childbirth, a life that didn't require a lot of physical exercise, and a love of cooking and food had taken their toll on her figure. She was still pretty, Sakura thought, and was always quick to smile or laugh or make a snack when she thought her daughter might need it. The pink hair that she'd passed on to her daughter was cut to shoulder length and pulled back in a small ponytail to keep it out of her face. In the last few months it seemed like her hair was beginning to take on a silver look to it as the gray hairs became more and more prevalent making it look like each strand was made of pure bismuth.

Sakura hurriedly stuffed some more food into her mouth to keep from having to answer. Her mother had only asked this exact same question four times already since breakfast started. Each time Sakura had been able to distract her to keep from having to share, but she could only dodge for so long.

"Did anything interesting happen?" Chiru pressed.

Sakura chewed slower, trying to keep her mouth full for as long as possible. Finally she couldn't bring herself to chew anymore and swallowed. "It was fine, mom," she replied.

"Tell me about it."

Sakura bit her lip and started to take another bite, but thought the better of it. "We had a little fight with some bad guys," she said at last, feeling the ache in her shoulder that had yet to totally heal. She'd made a conscious effort to keep the spot covered so her mother wouldn't see the dark bruising and red irritated skin.

"A fight?" Sakura could hear the alarm in her mother's voice. It had taken a lot of work to convince her mother that she should be allowed to become a genin instead of focusing her studies elsewhere. Were it not for her father (who tended to give in to her more than her mother), Sakura would have been studying to be some sort of bureaucrat or maybe a teacher for the younger kids

"It wasn't a big deal," she said quickly, hoping to sooth her mother's fears before her imagination blew things out of proportion. "They jumped us, we took care of them, none of us were hurt badly."

Chiru didn't miss the qualifier or what it meant. "Some of you were hurt?"

Sakura let out an exasperated sigh. "We're _ninja_, mom, we're going to get hurt sometimes, but we can handle it."  
"Were _you_ hurt?"

Sakura didn't answer right away, which she instantly regretted because she knew her mother would assume the worse.

"Did you go to the hos—"

"No, I didn't," Sakura groaned. "Mom, I'm fine. A medic-nin met us on the way back to the village to check up on Sasuke and me, but it wasn't a big deal. He took a look at my shoulder, used a healing jutsu and cleaned it up a bit and that was all he needed to do. It's no big deal."

Chiru let her cheek rest in the palm of her hand, her elbow propped up on the table. "It sounds like a big deal to me," she replied sullenly. "I knew it was a bad idea to let you do this, especially after they put you on the team with _that_ boy."

"Which boy?" Sakura asked quickly.

To her surprise, her mother paled slightly and stood up, making a big deal out of cleaning the few dishes in the sink. "Never mind."

"No, tell me," she pressed. "Are you talking about Sasuke-kun or Naruto?"

"I would never speak badly about the Uchiha boy," Chiru replied, "the poor thing. I just wish they wouldn't have put that _other_ boy on your team."

"What's wrong with Naruto…? I mean, except for being an idiot sometimes?"

"He's not… he's not a good influence." Sakura got the distinct impression that her mother had meant to say something different, but had stopped herself before it had slipped out. "He's always causing trouble, defacing the monument… so disrespectful of Hokage-sama and the village!"

Sakura smiled. "He's not that bad anymore. He hasn't pulled any pranks since he made genin and he always had to clean up his messes anyway. He's actually nice when you get to know him, he's a good frie…" Her voice trailed off as she noticed the way her mother stiffened at the unmistakable beginning of the word 'friend.'

"I understand you have to see him during you missions and training, but keep away from… _him_… during your free time."

"What!? Why?"

Chiru's face darkened the way it always did when she was laying down the law and expecting to be obeyed without question. "Because I'm your mother and I'm telling you to. He's not someone you should be associating with."

Sakura dropped her fork and pushed back from the table. "Naruto is my teammate and, more importantly, he's my _friend_," she told her mother firmly. "If I want to spend time with him, I will."

"Sakura…" Chiru reached out to touch her arm, but Sakura pulled out of reach. "Sakura, there are things about that boy that you don't know. It's not _just_ the vandalism, he's…"

"He's the only one of us that didn't get hurt," Sakura snapped. "Sasuke-kun near died, I was hurt, even Kakashi-sensei had some bad burns before it was all done, but Naruto… didn't… have… a scratch on him…"

It hadn't occurred to Sakura until that moment just how odd it was that Naruto had made it through the battle against the missing-nin without being hurt while she, Sasuke, and Kakashi had all been injured to some extent or other. He'd had to fight the leader of them too, what sort of luck had it taken to keep him from being hurt at all? And then there was the genjutsu of him attacking Kamui with some sort of weird jutsu that she'd never seen and getting stabbed when she foolishly called out to him in her surprise.

Even luck couldn't have kept him completely unharmed…

Then she remembered that he used corporeal clones, lots of them, when he fought. He probably just hadn't gotten anywhere near Kamui, which explained why Kamui had to use a genjutsu to trick her into thinking he'd stabbed Naruto. Yes, that made sense, Naruto didn't get hurt because he'd fought smart. He'd stayed back where he couldn't be touched and let the army he was capable of creating do all the dirty work.

But even as her mind accepted the logic of that explanation, it still didn't seem right. The Naruto she knew wouldn't fight like that, he'd insist on being part of the action even if there was an inherent danger in doing so. Plus, why would Kamui have used a genjutsu to trick her and not continued fighting Naruto? What point could that have possibly served, given how little a threat she was to him? And where had that killer intent come from when…

Sakura forced her mind elsewhere. She didn't want to think about the meadow or what she'd thought she'd seen or what she had definitely felt. Even now it made her stomach churn to remember the crushing weight that had hit her as Kamui stalked towards her. Either he'd produced that killer intent or something even scarier had, regardless, Kamui was dead and Sakura didn't want to think about it right now.

"Naruto's a good person," she told her mother, thankful for a different subject to deal with that served as such a perfect distraction from unpleasant memories. "You don't know him the way I do."

Her mother opened her mouth to protest, but closed it and looked down without saying anything. For a moment the two women stood in silence and then Chiru said, "I understand this is hard for you to understand, but I do know things about your… _friend_ that you don't. So just… just be careful, okay?"

Sakura wasn't sure what to make of that – or of the whole conversation, really – but she nodded. After lifting her cup and quickly drinking the last of her orange juice, she said, "Thanks for breakfast, it was nice to eat a real meal. I'm going to go see Sasuke-kun."

And then she walked resolutely out the door, ignoring when her mother called after her. She wasn't sure what had brought on the whole argument about Naruto, nor was she even sure what had been going through her mind when she'd announced that Naruto was her friend, but something about the way her mother had been talking about him, like he wasn't even a person or something, just rubbed her the wrong way. She knew Naruto could be annoying and stupid, but he wasn't a bad person, just an irritating one at times and even that wasn't all that frequent anymore.

He was her teammate and her friend; she wasn't going to let people talk badly about him… at least not unless he really deserved it.

ooo

It was risky to teach Hinata something like that, Naruto decided as he sat down on top of the Fourth Hokage's stone head and looked out over the village. Technically, he hadn't _taught_ her anything, of course, only _shown_ her, but she was plenty smart enough to figure it out. She'd have to be blind not to see that it was a taijutsu form created for the Hyuuga, by a Hyuuga. There were clear similarities between it and Juuken, but also some very important differences that Neji had felt were needed in order to help Hyuuga fight enemies that were capable of attacking from long range. Naruto didn't understand all of the differences himself, but Neji was a genius and he said they were important, so who was he to argue?

Besides, like he'd told Hinata, Neji had kicked all sort of ass once he'd developed this new style of Juuken.

Naruto hoped Neji – the Neji from the future, that is – wouldn't mind that Hinata might get credit for creating the style that he'd had spent years working on. Probably he would see that it was necessary in order to insure that Hinata's position in her clan was strengthened. Still, it didn't feel right, somehow. It was sort of like if he wrote what he could remember of _Icha Icha Tactics_ and then sold it as if it were his own… but in this case he had noble intentions. The other Neji – if he still existed in some afterlife somewhere – would just have to get over it.

It was odd that he found himself taking as many risks with Hinata's situation as he did. Befriending her earlier, helping to train her in the morning, and now this… it would be easier if she was respected by her clan, of course, but it wasn't like her life was in any danger and there was no way he would allow the elders of her clan to force a marriage upon her that she didn't want. Yet he'd taken as many chances trying to help her as he had trying to make sure that Sasuke wouldn't leave the village. There had to be a reason, but he couldn't think what it possibly could be. Probably he was still responding to the guilt of having not figured out how to get her out of the arranged marriage when she asked him to… or practically asked him anyway.

Yes, that made sense. He'd always felt really bad about that. Every single time he met with that bastard, Hyuuga Hiroshi, he'd thought about that night and wondered what she'd been talking about or if he should have let her talk him out of doing something drastic to help her.

_'How long ago was that? Five years? Ten?'_ he wondered. Technically, it hadn't happened yet, but to him it must have been at least close to ten years. Not all that long after Sakura's death, if he remembered right, but enough past it that he'd managed to somewhat recover emotionally or at least _appeared_ to have recovered.

ooo

_"Naruto-sama..." Hinata's voice whispered softly as she knocked on the door to the Hokage's room. _

_Not _his_ room, the Council was always quick to point out, the _Hokage's_ room. Never mind that he was already doing all of the duties the Hokage was supposed to do, or that almost every ninja in the village already considered him the Hokage... no, no, the Council had to appoint the Hokage, and several key members would never accept him to that role. So he was stuck with all of the duties – because those same members of the Council were in no hurry to appoint someone else – but none of the cool titles or mountain sculptures… the pay sucked too. _

_"Come in, Hinata… er, Hinata-dono," Naruto replied with a weary rub of his eyes, he would never get used to all this respect stuff he was supposed to be showing all the time… another thing that he didn't think he should have to do if they weren't going to name him the Hokage. He glanced down at the paperwork he'd been doing and realized that the last several items he'd signed had not actually been read. _

_"I brought y-you some coffee," Hinata said as she stepped into the room. _

_Her stuttering had died down drastically, at least in his presence, over the years, but still showed up every now and then. In all honesty, he scarcely even noticed anymore, his ears just automatically filtered it out. Anytime they were together, he couldn't help but notice what a wonderful person she'd become over the years. He'd always thought she was nice, though a bit dark and weird, but now she had strange peacefulness about her that was very welcome in such uncertain times. She was one of his few friends from childhood who had survived the long war so far, and she was easily the one he sought out the most when he was troubled or just needing to relax. She never seemed to want anything from him other than his company, and that was a welcome change. _

_"Uh, thanks, Hinata," he said with a smile as the refreshing aroma filled the office that _wasn't_ his. "That's really nice of you." He rose from his chair and stretched, enjoying the popping of his back as things settled into their proper places. He turned and looked out the open window, enjoying the sight of the peaceful – or at least _mostly_ peaceful – village as it slumbered and the gentle summer breeze that caressed and soothed it._

_There were reports that Orochimaru would soon be on the move again, though the different reports had conflicting opinions on what his next target would be, most likely another little country that would be far enough away from the Fire Country to keep any requested (or not requested) aid from arriving in time. War would be coming to the Fire Country soon, that much was certain, the only question was when, where, and against how many. It was a depressing subject that he'd allowed himself to dwell on far more than was healthy, but this time his descent into gloom was interrupted by Hinata bumping him lightly with her hip as she stepped next to him and looked out over the village as well. _

_He glanced at her and grinned sheepishly, knowing she had probably guessed where his mind was headed. He wasn't sure when it had happened, but somewhere along the way, she'd become remarkably skilled at reading his emotional swings and usually stepped in to keep him from wallowing too much. It was another thing that he enjoyed about her and another reason that he so often sought out her company._

_Hinata smiled back graciously and handed him the steaming mug as she lifted another to her lips and drank deeply. It was late and the window to the Hokage's office was the only one still lit, as it normally was. _

_"You know, there are people here who are supposed to get me things like this... you didn't have to come all the way from the other side of the village just to bring me some coffee," he grinned as the caffeine began to work its way through his system and revive him. _

_"I don't mind, besides the only ones still here are Konohamaru and Udon," Hinata informed him, her cheeks turning the faintest shade of pink, but he thought it might just be a trick of the dim light, "and you probably sh-shouldn't eat or drink anything they get you."_

_Naruto started to chuckle, but it was interrupted by a long yawn._

_"It's getting late, N-Naruto-sama, you should go home."_

_"I liked it better when you called me 'Naruto-kun' or even just 'Naruto'" Naruto replied, trying to change the subject. Several of his friends… his _surviving_ friends… had pointed out that he had been working too hard lately, but he couldn't help it. After the disastrous battle against Akatsuki a few years earlier, when so many of his friends were killed – including Hinata's cousin, Neji – he just couldn't bring himself to go home at night. Instead he stayed up as late as possible, working until his eyes burned and his brain simply shut down, and then fell asleep either on the floor, a nearby couch, or right at the desk. It didn't hold back the nightmares that had been plaguing him, but they couldn't last as long if he didn't _sleep_ as long._

_"You are an adult and the leader of the village, not just a childhood friend, it would be inappropriate for me to call you that… Naruto-kun."_

_He grinned at her and took another sip of his coffee. For a long moment, they stood in silence and then he asked, "So why are you here, Hinata-_chan_?"_

_"I thought you should know, the Clan Elders have decided."_

_"Decided what?" This definitely piqued his interest. Non-Hyuuga rarely got to hear what was going on inside the Hyuuga clan, especially ones who weren't the Hokage… which he technically wasn't. Hinata kept him informed, however, much to the Elders' disapproval, but he knew even she didn't always tell him everything. _

_Hinata took a deep breath and then said, "They do not w-wish for me to become the Head of the Clan…"_

_"But they have to!" Naruto nearly yelled, forgetting both how close she was to him and the stillness of the late hour._

_Hinata looked down at the floor and bit her lip while Konohamaru and Udon burst through the doors, their eyes wide, searching for any signs of trouble. Naruto glanced at them and apologized, telling them to go home for the night. Though there was much protesting to the order – even a not-quite-Hokage should have bodyguards – they eventually departed after being informed that they could either leave on their own or he could "help" them along the way. _

_Once things had settled back down, Naruto turned back to Hinata and said, in a much quieter voice, "What do you mean they don't want you to be the Head of the Clan?"_

_"T-they do not feel that I am… right… for the job," she replied, picking her words carefully._

_"But with Hanabi..." Naruto's voice trailed off as he kicked himself mentally for bringing up the death of Hinata's sister. "Uh… I'm sorry," he added lamely, rubbing at the sleep building up in his eyes. _

_"No, you're right, with my sister dead they have no choice but to leave me in the Main family… however, they have arranged a marriage for me to the man who will officially run the clan." _

_"Arranged a marriage?!?" Naruto was glad he'd sent Konohamaru and Udon home, because he was yelling louder this time and he didn't feel like calming down again to explain that everything was okay to his young friends who were just trying to do their jobs. "They can't do that!" _

_"Forgive m-me, Naruto-sama," Hinata replied, unconsciously slipping back into a more respective tone which only angered him more, "but they can. My father is dying, my favored little sister is dead… and the most powerful Hyuuga in a g-generation, Neji-niisan, is also dead. It is the job of the Clan Elder's to decide who will make the best leader in t-times such as these, and they do not feel that it is me." _

_"But… but they can't __make__ you marry someone, just because they… can they?"_

_"Yes, N-Naruto-sama, they can. I-I am, after all, a Hyuuga, first and foremost."_

_"Damn it, Hinata," he growled, "don't pull this meek crap! You know damn well you would a great leader for you clan! Why are you letting them do this?"_

_"Because I have no choice," she replied softly. When they were children she would have been stunned into silence by his outburst, but she was no longer that timid little girl. "Times are hard and the Hyuuga are scared and confused, if I go against the Elders, it will only further split us. I will not do that." _

_"But there has to be a way… something someone could do to force them to see things right…" _

_"There is," she whispered in a voice that made it sound like she was revealing something she'd rather not._

_Naruto's eyes opened wide and he stared at her. "What is it?"_

_"I can't tell you," Hinata said sadly. "If I did, it would be meaningless... as bad as this marriage will be… worse, perhaps, because I would always wonder if it was real… if it was done for the right reason… and I can't be that selfish." _

_"What are you talking about?"_

_Hinata was quiet for a long time, staring out the window, her eyes wandering casually from the stars in the sky to the lamps lining the streets and then back up to the stars. "A childish dream that I held onto for far too long, I fear, Naruto-sama" she replied with a smile that tried to hid the tears building in her eyes. "If… if it _was_ possible, there wouldn't be a reason for me to say it out loud anyway…"_

_"Hinata," Naruto said as he reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, "just tell me what to do and I'll do it, I swear. I _won't_ let them do this to you; I don't care what it takes." Wild fantasies and even a few feasible plans were already flashing through his mind, anything to stop the crime against his friend. Everything from assassination missions being assigned to trusted high ranking jounin to himself single-handedly storming the Hyuuga compound and knocking some sense into the old bastards the backwards clan called Elders seemed to be laid out in front of him, waiting for him to pick the first one that struck his fancy.. _

_Hinata reached up and wiped the tears from her eyes, suddenly aware of where his thoughts were going. "Naruto-sama, you must not do anything foolish! This village needs you as its Hokage, if you… if you do what you are thinking, nothing good will come of it." _

_Naruto frowned at the word 'Hokage' and then sighed, "Ah, come on, I assign assassination missions all the time… no one would even have to know…"_

_"Naruto-sama!" she snapped in her soft voice. "You must not! There's a way to stop this union from happening, but… but if that is not possible – and, if you didn't instantly know what I was speaking of, it isn't – then this way is better. The Hyuuga will get a strong leader and Konoha will keep its strong Hokage." _

_Naruto looked into her pearl eyes, trying to read the answer there, but wasn't sure what he was even looking for. She didn't want him to use his unofficial-Hokage powers to deal with the situation, she didn't want him to interfere at all – outside of this mysterious solution she'd mentioned, but wouldn't elaborate on – so what the hell was he supposed to do? Just watch her clan sell her to someone she didn't even know, just because they were too stupid to see how amazing she was? _

_"What about you?" he asked and she quickly looked away, breaking the eye contact and hiding the emotions she could feel rising to the surface._

_"I am a citizen of Konoha and a member of the Hyuuga clan, Naruto-sama. I will get a strong leader for my clan and will keep my strong Hokage."_

_Naruto's jaw flexed. "I told you and Neji I would change the Hyuuga…"_

_Hinata smiled sadly, "Things are not always as easy as they seemed when we were children nor do they always go the way we had hoped… or secretly dreamed…"_

_He wanted to tell her she was wrong, he wanted to force her to tell him how he could fix things, he wanted… He wanted things to be simple again, but they weren't and they probably never would be._

_The wonderful simplicity of childhood was gone forever._

ooo

Naruto sighed and got to his feet. There was no point in dwelling on the past. Maybe he was trying so hard to help Hinata because he felt like he owed her for not stopping her marriage, maybe it was because he wanted to get back at the clan that had so irritated and vexed him in the future, or maybe it was because he was just trying to repay Hinata for being there for him after Sakura was killed. It didn't really matter. She needed his help, so he would help her. He hoped what he'd done for her so far would be enough because once the Chuunin Exam started he wouldn't have time to help her along and there was no telling what might happen once he found Orochimaru.

A shadow was drawing ever closer to Konoha, and when it came, Naruto had to be ready. Kabuto, Orochimaru, Gaara, all of them were racing towards him at top speed now. A few weeks, maybe a month, the Exam couldn't be much farther away than that. And when it arrived, the final battle against fate would come with it. He felt confident that he could do it, that he could change the world and make it a better place for the people he loved, but it wouldn't be easy.

For him, it always seemed, nothing ever was.

o

o

A/N: Bit of a slower chapter after the last couple of fight filled ones. Frankly, I'm happy for the break and this chapter had some important events that needed to be told. The next chapter will be another that's a little slower, but after that we'll be into the Chuunin Exam and hopefully that will be fun. Also, I got 57 reviews for the last chapter which is awesome (second most ever, I believe), so thanks to all of you who reviewed. Reviews totally make my day.

Okay, I don't know how often Hinata gets taught another form of taijutsu in Naruto stories, I've only seen it in DameWren's _Two Halves_ (an excellent story if you haven't read it), but I wouldn't be surprised if there's more of it out there. Since I remember reading a reply to a review (or many reviews, perhaps) in one of her author's notes where she had to defend the change, I thought I'd just try to head it off now, less anyone feel like arguing over this minor plot point. It's not that I think Juuken is flawed, per say, just that I've noticed that Juuken users _never_ use ninjutsu or anything other than Juuken, even when it would be quite helpful (like in Neji's fight with Kidomaru). Basically, I figured that if anyone could find away to come up with a taijutsu form that took advantage of the Byakugan but allowed the user to be more flexible when dealing with long range opponents and improved areas that could be refined, it would be Neji. It won't suddenly be this awesome thing that completely turns Hinata into some sort of badass or anything, in fact, she'll barely even use it until much later since she was only taught by someone who had only the very basics (that he hadn't even been officially taught) of it down.

In other news, I decided that I had to give Sakura's mother a name in this chapter. She just had too large of a scene to keep calling her "Sakura's mother." Chiru is the Japanese word for the falling/scattering of blossoms, such as _Sakura_ blossoms. It seemed like as good a name as any and it was easier on my eyes than having "Sakura's mother" over and over. Should Sakura's parents ever show up in the manga, I'll probably come back and change this, but for now it works and Chiru might not ever show up again in this story anyway…

The flashback with Naruto and Hinata has been written out for… well, for a long time. Nearly since the beginning, I think. At first it was practically a short one shot and went quite differently. Naruto was distraught over something or other and Hinata comforted him and he ended up kissing her. It was sort of a tragic, not realizing what he could have had until it was too late and she was married and off limits sort of thing. In subsequent rewrites, when it became closer to this, I liked how clueless he was about her feelings and that his first thoughts were of assigning assassination missions and breaking into the Hyuuga manor to stop the whole thing from happening. It just seemed very Naruto-ish to me. I've been wanting to insert it since about the second chapter, where I started mentioning Hinata's arranged marriage, but it just never seemed to fit until now.

As always, let me know what you think (and for you Japanese language buffs out there, did Naruto use "–dono" properly in the flashback?).


	21. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

o

Team Seven's day off was over all too soon. Despite the difficulty of their mission, Kakashi had them back to work on the second day after returning to Konoha, though the D rank missions he picked up for them the first couple of days were noticeably on the easy side: no heavy lifting, no milking angry cows, just a couple of nice simple missions while they finished recuperating. Even their training sessions were more relaxed than usual, much to Naruto's boisterous disapproval. The only person who was actually given any new work to do was Sakura who was to begin meeting with a medic-nin every other day to get some advanced training in medical jutsu. Kakashi apparently had arranged for her extra training on their day off after hearing about and seeing the results of her attempt at a healing jutsu during their mission.

The relaxed schedule for the boys didn't last long, either, and soon they were back in the swing of things and feeling exhausted (or feigning it, in Naruto's case) by the time their days were over. Babysitting missions, building demolition missions, crop harvesting missions, grocery shopping missions, they did them all. Afterwards Kakashi went back to his more typical training sessions in which he taught them a couple of jutsu or added new wrinkles to their taijutsu repertoire – never anything too advanced, but he drilled it into them until it was second nature.

After a week and a half of these sorts of missions, Naruto's patience was wearing thin. He knew the Chuunin Exam was coming soon, but it had been years since there had been an actual Chuunin Exam in the future. With Orochimaru either taking over or forming alliances with one country after another, no one felt safe enough to honor the old treaties and allow an Exam to take place in their village – they'd learned their lesson from Konoha's near disaster when Naruto took the Exam. Unfortunately, asking about it was out of the question. He had no reason to think that his team would get to take it – or at least no reason that would make sense to anyone who didn't know he was actually from the future – and therefore no reason to be asking how far away it was. Kakashi was beginning to teach them increasingly difficult techniques and working them harder than he had in the past, so it was obvious that the Exam was coming soon, but exactly _how_ soon was still a mystery to Naruto. Certainly it couldn't be more than another few weeks.

His impatience was tempered by the fact that life really was going well for him. If it weren't for the fact that the fate of the world was resting on his shoulders, he might have even been able to stop caring about how far off the Exam was.

His mornings with Hinata were relaxed and fun. She had really improved a lot from where she'd been when he first started working with her. They didn't do anything more with Neji's taijutsu form since Naruto didn't know any more of it than what he'd shown her and she continued to use Juuken when they sparred, but every once in a while he'd see hints of the new form beginning to show up in her movements.

He still hadn't heard of any successes against Hanabi in front of their father, which worried him a little. If he couldn't help her get over that hump, he might have to actually go to Hiashi himself and point out that his parenting techniques needed a little _refining_ in Hinata's case… and that was _not_ a conversation he was anxious to have. Fortunately, from what he could discern amongst all of Hinata's modesty and praise-shifting to her teammates, Team Eight's missions were going far better than they had back before the Wave Country mission. Kiba was still acting a little odd, not quite over Akamaru's brush with death, but that was too be expected and it wasn't interfering with their missions enough to keep them from succeeding at nearly everything they were assigned.

All of that was secondary, however, to the gradual increase in confidence that he'd seen in her. She was still soft spoken, of course, and hadn't completely broken free from the stuttering, but she no longer apologized for not being completely perfect in every little thing she attempted to do and actually could consistently look him in the eye when they talked. Since he really didn't have anything to teach her on the taijutsu front (having already imparted his meager knowledge of Neji's style to her), he spent most of their time together sparring with her and teaching her things that he knew she'd be good at so he could continue to work on building her up until she could actually see how good she really was. She was getting there, but she'd always been shy and had felt like a failure ever since Hanabi first began getting the better of their little matches, if not earlier. It would take a while to bring her up to the point she'd reached when they were adults, but not nearly as long as it had taken her in the original timeline, not by a long shot.

His work with Sasuke and Sakura was, if possible, going even better. The three of them now routinely spent time after Kakashi dismissed them either training or just hanging out together. He even managed to talk them into coming with him for ramen a couple of times, though Sakura only agreed if he was concede to going somewhere else from time to time – as clear a proof as ever there was that Sakura was not the perfect woman he'd envisioned her as when he was originally this young.

Sasuke was still quite and often made sarcastic comments about Naruto's work or ability, but there was no malice in his voice or not a lot anyway. Generally it was the feeling of siblings teasing each other and enjoying one another's company even if they wouldn't admit it. In the future, Sasuke had been what Naruto had always thought a brother might be, now they were almost back to that same spot, except instead of a heated rivalry that had undertones of real aggression, theirs was more of a friendly competition. Not that either of them appreciated losing to the other – and Sasuke generally won the vast majority of their unofficial competitions (usually over who could complete their portion of the mission the fastest), even when Naruto really tried to beat him using only genin level abilities – but there didn't seem to be any hard feelings if one was more successful than the other.

If nothing else, at least Sasuke now knew that Naruto was actually a very good ninja, hopefully that meant that he wouldn't see any rapid growth as a threat down the road and maybe, just maybe, he'd be willing to look for help from Naruto when the time came to deal with Itachi. Already he let Naruto help him on the rare occasions that he didn't instantly get Kakashi's instructions – that alone was more than Naruto had ever dreamed of achieving even just a few weeks ago.

Sakura was also far friendlier than she'd been at this point in the past. Naruto wasn't sure what had happened, but ever since they'd returned from Kogane she'd begun to act a little protective of him and was more open about their friendship than she'd been before. She'd actually taken to glaring at the occasional villager who muttered some insult at Naruto just loud enough for his teammates to hear and once she even told an old man to "shut his toothless trap" after he'd used some particularly colorful language to paint his comment about Naruto. Of course, she'd promptly fallen all over herself apologizing to the man for being so rude, but the fact that she'd said anything at all warmed Naruto's heart. It had been years since he'd been with the people he considered family, but at long last some of them had returned. Seeing them alive again when he first found himself in the past had been like some sort of dream, seeing them acting like the people he'd loved was a gift from the heavens. With her now learning to be a medic-nin it felt like she was practically the Sakura he'd lost all those years ago.

All he needed now was to find Jiraiya, Tsunade, and change Gaara into the man who would be the future Kazekage and his family would be just about complete. Easier said than done, but he was on a roll now. Nothing could stop him.

At night, when as he stared up at his ceiling and waited for his once again nightmareless sleep to take him, he did his best to pull the events of the Chuunin Exam from the deep recesses of his mind. It would be this month, he was sure of that much, but the exact date was still fuzzy. Then there was the question of meeting Gaara. That had happened before the Exam, for sure… and he had the funny feeling that Konohamaru had been there for some reason. Sasuke had definitely been there and back then wherever Sasuke went, Sakura was sure to follow, so she must have been present. The problem was, he couldn't think of any reason why he, Konohamaru along with Moegi and Udon, even though he didn't specifically remember them they were _always_ wherever Konohamaru was), Sasuke, and Sakura would be together in a spot where they'd run into visiting ninja.

After some more thought, he gave it up for lost. Whatever the reason, they'd all been there, so he'd have to make it a point to hang out with Konohamaru a little more – the little boy had been bugging him to play ninja with them a lot since they got back from their mission and he'd also been dropping some not too subtle hints that it might be nice of Naruto to show them some of the "cool" jutsu he'd learned since becoming a genin.

Naruto hadn't seen a whole lot of the Third's grandson since arriving in the past, though he'd played ninja with the three children once or twice – not nearly as often as they wanted him to (or as he probably had the first time around), but more than a self respecting genin should. It was funny to see three people that he'd last seen when they were in their early twenties now returned to being eight year olds throwing toy kunai and shuriken.

Moegi would eventually grow up to be quite beautiful, but now she was just a little girl with rosy cheeks, two strange lumps of hair rising out of her head like giant orange horns, and the goggles that all three wore so they would look like Naruto had when he was in the Academy. Udon was… actually, Udon – with the exception of having a runnier nose – looked just like he would in the future: big glasses, brown hair in a bowl cut, and perpetual frown. The one whose reversion was the most shocking was Konohamaru. Naturally he didn't sport the beard that he'd grown as soon as he was able to in honor of his fallen uncle, Asuma, nor was he as tall and muscular as he would be in the not-so-distant future. In fact, the only parts of his appearance that would remain with him into adulthood were his spiky brown hair and the long, blue scarf that he always wore.

Naruto made a mental note to start hanging out with the three of them more in the hopes of running into Gaara. If they didn't meet up before the Exam, it wasn't a big deal, he doubted there was much he could do to help his future friend until at least the third test anyway, but it would be nice to see him and he needed to try to keep tabs on the Sand-nins once they started arriving. Sad as it was, they were coming with the intention of betraying Konoha, he couldn't let himself forget that just because he'd been friends with them in the future.

ooo

At the start of the third week back from Kogane, they were given a simple mission in which they had to walk a couple of villagers' dogs. That easy mission ended up being nearly as strenuous as the A Rank mission when Naruto accidentally mishandled one of the dog's leashes while trying to switch hands, freeing that dog which then knocked Sakura over and released the dogs she was walking, which then swarmed around Sasuke who had to let go of his dogs' leashes in order to keep from being trampled.

Soon Team Seven was running all over the village chasing down dogs and apologizing to villagers who'd had their lunches stolen or their flowers trampled or who happened to be allergic to dogs and were now suffering from sneezing fits. A lot of the blame fell on Naruto, naturally, but the presence of Sakura – who did most of the apologizing – and Sasuke – who did _none_ of the apologizing – kept most tempers in check.

By the time the mission came to an end and they'd been debriefed, they were all exhausted. During the walk from the Tower, Naruto announced his plans to ban all non-ninken dogs from the village when he was Hokage as well as a mandatory naptime for anyone taking D rank missions that involved handling animals of any kind. Sakura immediately put her stamp of approval on the idea, while Sasuke snorted and shook his head in semi-amusement.

As they walked towards the training grounds, with Naruto comically leaning against a wooden fence as he dragged his feet along the sidewalk, Kakashi suddenly looked up. Sakura was busy talking to Sasuke, who was _almost_ keeping up his side of the conversation today, so the two of them missed it, but Naruto's eyes caught the movement of the jounin's head and looked up just in time to see a messenger hawk fly overhead, dropping a single feather as it passed them.

_'A meeting?'_ Naruto wondered. That _was_ what the feather drop was supposed to mean, or at least it was what it meant in the future when he'd paid attention to such things. They'd just left the Third's office, what could possibly have happened in the last ten minutes that required Kakashi to head to a meeting?

It only took a second for him to realize the most likely answer to that question.

_'Finally!'_ he cheered inside.

"Since you all are so tired," Kakashi said coming to a stop, "why don't you take the rest of the day off? I just remembered that there was something else I needed to do anyway."

Sakura gave Kakashi a funny look and shook her head. "You just want to spend more time reading your book."

Naruto stuffed a hand in his mouth to keep from laughing.

Kakashi didn't bother giving her an answer. He just turned and wandered off in the general direction of the Hokage Tower. When he was gone, the question of what they should do next arose. Since they'd been working hard and hadn't really had much to eat yet that day, Naruto suggested they go out for ramen, but was vetoed in a _close_ 2-1 decision after a controversial ruling that the three hands raised for ramen didn't count if they were all still technically Naruto's hands.

"I'm just going to go home," Sasuke said with a shrug as Naruto and Sakura continued to playfully argue over whether or not shadow clones were allowed to vote.

"You aren't going to go train?" Sakura asked, quickly turning away from Naruto.

"Maybe later."

Sakura bit her lip and pressed the toe of her right foot against the concrete. "Can I join you?" she asked hopefully.

Sasuke shrugged. "Training grounds are open to anyone who wants to use them."

"That means: 'yes, please come, I'll be ever so lonely without you,'" Naruto supplied with a grin and an exaggerated wink at Sasuke.

"Idiot," Sasuke muttered as he gave the blond a reproachful glare, but didn't contradict him. He turned, put his hands in his pockets and walked away without another word to either of his teammates.

Sakura tried to smack Naruto on the back of the head, but the blond quickly dodged out of the way and stuck his tongue out at her teasingly. "Naruto, you're being annoying," she growled at him with a roll of her eyes. She almost looked genuinely mad, except that the corner of her mouth kept twitching as she fought down the urge to smile.

"Ah, come on, Sakura-chan," Naruto laughed as bounced on his toes, his energy having miraculously returned after their long, tiring mission, "why would you want to go train with boring, broody Sasuke," he made a face that was supposed to look bored, but mostly just looked silly, "when you could go have ramen with someone as cool as me?"

"Because we've gone out for ramen four times in the last week and I'm sick of it," she informed him. "And Sasuke-kun isn't boring or broody."

Naruto brought his hands together and instantly transformed into a perfect clone of her, except for the whisker marks on either cheek. Then he clasped his hands in front of his chest and batted his eyes as he said in her voice, "He's handsome and dreamy… the perfect ma—oops!"

Sakura took a mostly playful swing at him (though he suspected she would be perfectly content with making solid contact), but he ducked under it, the illusion disappearing as he did, and then took a quick step back to avoid her follow up strike. Unfortunately, doing so caused him to trip over a large, square rock with two holes cut out of the front of it. Naruto landed on his butt and stared at the strange object for a second, then stood up and took a couple of steps away from it. When he turned around, the "rock" had inched closer to him. He glanced at Sakura and rolled his eyes, earning a smile and a small giggle from her.

Getting down on all fours, Naruto peered into the holes on the "rock" and shook his head. "What sort of rock is square with two holes cut out of the front of it?" he asked, giving it a tap to let its occupants know that the jig was up.

"Just what I'd expect from the man I view as my rival!" Konohamaru said as he and his two friends, Moegi and Udon climbed out from under the cardboard "rock" that they had probably spent hours building. The three had been affectionately dubbed the "Konohamaru Corps." by the older generation and the name had stick with them all the way until their early deaths.

"Hey guys," Naruto said with a smile. "Aren't you three supposed to be in class right now?"

"You said you'd play ninja with us," Konohamaru reminded him with a big encouraging grin that probably got him whatever he wanted from the older women in the village who doted on him because of his grandfather.

Naruto _had_ promised that, but he'd meant after they finished with their classes. If Iruka or another instructor caught them playing with him, there was little doubt where the blame would fall. "I don't remember doing that…" he told them with a barely suppressed smile. "And even if I did, I wouldn't have meant I'd play while you three were supposed to be in school."

Konohamaru scowled while Moegi and Udon glanced at him nervously. "That's cold, bro," the little boy said, and then he thrust an irritated finger into Naruto's face and yelled, "You _promised_!"

Naruto swatted the finger away with a grin. "You're just a little brat. Who cares what I promised you?" he teased. "Just because you're the Hokage's grand_baby _you think important ninja like me have nothing better to do with their time than play with you?"

Even after all these years, he still remembered the right buttons to push with Konohamaru and the reaction he got was even better than he'd expected. The boy's whole face screwed up with rage and his little hand curled into a 'threatening' fist which he shook at Naruto.

"I'm going to kick your ass, bro! You aren't our Boss anymore!"

Naruto sidestepped the punch and leapt onto the fence, his feet sticking to the boards so he standing parallel to the ground just high enough that Konohamaru couldn't quite reach him without jumping – which he did only to find himself being easily pushed back to the ground. Naruto didn't even have to look at him to repel the attack.

"You want to play, Sakura-chan?" Naruto asked as Konohamaru tried once more to get a hold of him only to end up on his butt.

Sakura shook her head. "You're the weirdest friend I've ever had."

"At least I'm more interesting than, Sasuke, right?" Naruto said with a smile.

"In your dreams," Sakura retorted with a shake of her head and a repressed grin as she started walking for home. "I'm heading home, let me know if you and Sasuke do anything later, okay?"

Naruto saluted with one hand as he blocked another Konohamaru punch with the other.

As Sakura walked past him she reached up, grabbed a large handful of his blond hair and gave it a firm tug, pulling him off the fence and nearly treating him to a concrete sandwich were it not for his quick reflexes which brought his hands down in time. His reflexes, however, were no help against the three eight year olds who suddenly jumped on him.

"Have _fun_, Naruto," Sakura called out over her shoulder with a laugh as the sounds of scuffling, grunting, and punching rose up from the small pile of humanity as the four "played."

When she was gone and Naruto had subdued Konohamaru, sitting on the poor boy's back while keeping Moegi and Udon pinned down with his right arm, Konohamaru looked up at him and said, "I like her, Boss. You better not let her get away."

Naruto rolled his eyes and rubbed his knuckles against the boy's skull. "Kid, you have no idea how wrong that would be."

ooo

Kakashi was the last of the jounin to arrive in the Hokage's private meditation room, where Sarutobi Hiruzen liked to hold meetings that required a certain level of secrecy. The large room was quiet and out of the way with thick walls and no windows. It was normally only lit by the two tall candles that rested on either side of the table sitting in front of the large comfortable chair that made up the only two pieces of furniture in the room, but today the overhead lights were also on so that the roughly twenty jounin could see each other properly.

Kakashi had been in this room several times, both with the Third and Fourth Hokages. As he made the long walk from the door to the spot where his fellow jounin were assembled, he recalled thinking that his former sensei, the Fourth, had always looked out of place amongst the flowing dark curtains of varying dark colors that swooped down from the ceiling and along the walls in an attempt to soften the edges of the room and – perhaps – give some aid to the meditation process. In Kakashi's eyes, Minato Namikaze had been too young for a room like this and unfortunately he'd never grown to the point where he would look at home in such surroundings.

As soon as he reached the back of the group, receiving a couple of nods from former subordinates and teammates, the Third looked up from something on his desk that he'd been reading and smiled around his pipe at all of them.

"You've all been assembled here for one reason," he informed them as smoke curled up from his pipe and drifted through towards the curtains above him, "and I'm sure you could look around and guess what that reason is based on who I've summoned."

Kakashi didn't bother looking around, the answer was obvious. The people in the room were all either the jounin for the teams that were currently made entirely of genin or else were instructors that the Academy who had taught most of those genin. There was only one reason to summon these people, at least in times of peace. "It's that time already."

"I've seen other ninja from other countries in the village," someone behind him added, "so you've already informed them."

"When is it?" Yuhi Kurenai asked, voicing the only question that was really left at this point.

The Third took another puff on his pipe and then let out a slow, smoky breath. "One week. I'll announce it properly on the first day of the seventh moon, seven days from now."

"So soon?" a voice from the crowd asked.

Hiruzen nodded and let his eyes travel over each one of them, a small smile wrinkling the skin of his cheek. "The reason you are here is to let me know who we will be entering. First, we'll hear from those who are watching over the new genin."

Kakashi, Kurenai, and the Thirds own son, Sarutobi Asuma, stepped forward. Asuma was a large man, taller than Kakashi and more powerfully built, with a well trimmed beard and dark brown hair that he'd inherited from his father, though the Third had little of the color left by this point.

The Third smiled at them. "Kakashi, Kurenai, Asuma, are there any genin you wish to enter into this Chuunin Exam?"

Kurenai had been waiting for this moment since her team had returned from the mission to the Wave Country. She'd watched them struggle during that mission, she'd seen how hard they worked, she'd seen them draw closer together in the wake of Akamaru's injury, and she'd seen the improvements in all of them. They were barely even recognizable from the genin that she'd first found when she introduced herself to them. A month or two ago, she might not have even dreamed of entering them no matter how much potential she thought they had, but that potential was being realized and she wanted to see how far it could take them. The Exam was in their home village this time, so their families might all have a chance to see how well they did and the danger to them was minimized. More than that, they were ready.

She was so excited about it, that she didn't even follow procedure and let the person called first, in this case Kakashi, give the first response. "The Kurenai led Team Eight: Hyuuga Hinata, Inuzuka Kiba, and Aburame Shino. Under the name of Yuhi Kurenai, I nominate them to take the Chuunin Selection Exam." She heard the a few gasps behind her and had to struggle not to smile. She couldn't wait to see the faces of her fellow jounin when they saw her team of relative unknowns and unwanteds in action.

Kakashi didn't protest her break in decorum or even act as if she had spoken out of turn he simply followed up right after her. "The Kakashi led Team Seven: Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, and Uzumaki Naruto. Under the name of Hatake Kakashi, the same as to my _right_."

Asuma took a long drag from his cigarette, blew out small a cloud of smoke, and then said, "The Asuma led Team Ten: Yamanaka Ino, Nara Shikamaru, and Akimichi Chouji. Under the name of Sarutobi Asuma, the same as to my left."

The Third emptied the used contents of his pipe onto a small plate on this desk and then set it aside, his eyes momentarily meeting Kakashi's. The jounin nodded in answer to the unasked question about his certainty of nominating his team despite his misgivings concerning Naruto. "All of them, hm?" he asked as his eyes moved on to his son and then over to Kurenai. "How rare."

"Hold on a sec!" the voice of Umino Iruka called out from the back of the room. Everyone turned towards him in surprise. As far as anyone knew, no one had ever objected to any of the applicants for the Chuunin Selection Exam. In fact, it was extremely rare for anyone other than the jounin who were entering their students and the Hokage to even speak during the meeting.

"Yes, Iruka, what is it?" the Third asked. If the irregularity of the situation bothered him, his voice didn't show it.

Iruka pushed his way to the front of the room and stood before the Hokage and bowed his head. "Hokage-sama, forgive me. I know I'm speaking out of place, but these nine were all students of mine at the Academy." He looked up and glanced in the direction of the three jounin who had just entered the nine names and said, "Of course, they are all very talented, but it's far too early for them to take the Exam. They need more experience… I'm sorry, I just can't understand the jounins' reasoning."

Kakashi heard the chuunin's real argument hidden within the words he'd said. He wasn't worried about all of the nine; he knew what someone like Sasuke was capable of. Iruka was mostly worried about one person and one person only: Uzumaki Naruto. As concerned and suspicious as Kakashi was about who and what the boy really was, it was good that Naruto had someone who cared so much, but that didn't mean that Kakashi appreciated having his judgment questioned. Iruka was blind if he couldn't see that whatever Naruto was, he was ready to take this Exam.

"I became a chuunin when I was six years younger than Naruto," he pointed out.

"Times have changed," Iruka shot back, "and Naruto is different from you! Just a few weeks ago he was…" his voice trailed off and he quickly pushed thoughts of Naruto's depression and fear away. This was not just about one boy, regardless of how special. His gaze shifted to the other two jounin and then back to Kakashi. "Are you trying to crush these kids?" he demanded. "The Chuunin Exam is dang—"

"Naruto has complained about the difficulty level of nearly every mission he's ever been given… all except for our _A_ _Rank_ mission and even then he complained about the smell of the town," Kakashi interrupted. "Experiencing some _real_ pain might be good for them…" he smiled beneath his mask, knowing that he was goading Iruka to make his point. "And besides, seeing how much they can take before it crushes them could be fun."

The real truth was that he not only wanted to see what his team _could_ do in the Exam, but also that he wanted to see what Naruto _would_ do. The situation they'd faced in Kogane had been enough to force Naruto to show some of what he was capable of, but Kakashi had been elsewhere for most of it. This test would force the young ninja to reveal more of himself under circumstances that could be observed and studied by others.

"What!?" Iruka yelled, his eyes going wide and his hands curling into fists.

"I'm joking, Iruka-_sensei_," Kakashi sighed. "I can understand your feelings and I realize this must be… _upsetting_ for you, but…"

"Kakashi, stop it," Kurenai hissed. "You're taking this too far."

"…stay out of this," Kakashi finished his lone eye growing very cold and serious. "They aren't you're students anymore. You can't possibly even know how strong they've become in this short period of time. From the day you let them graduate, they've been my soldiers and I know what they are capable of better than you do. Don't forget that. Ever."

Iruka's jaw flexed and he looked like he wanted to say more, but couldn't think of any sort of response. Kakashi was right and they all knew it. Finally he lowered his eyes and shook his head. "If you get _him_ killed…"

Kakashi grinned and clapped the chuunin on the shoulder as if they were old friends. "Have some faith, Iruka. You and I have taught them better than that."

"Iruka is right," a voice behind Kakashi said.

Kakashi didn't bother turning around, he knew who the voice belonged to. Maito Gai, with his shiny, black, perfectly combed bowl cut and tight fitting green body suit was everything Kakashi was not. Prone to emotional outbursts, punctual, and a bit uptight… at least when it came to some things. Kakashi liked him immensely, not that he could ever let _Gai_ know that, getting under the other jounin's skin was half the fun.

"You're rushing them," Gai continued. "I had my team wait a whole year so they could gain more experience and greater abilities. You should let them mature a little more before throwing them into the fire…"

"Pft," Kakashi blew out an annoyed breath. "My team may not be perfect, yet, but they'll blow past yours with ease…"

"Enough!" The Third said, silencing Gai's retort. "The jounin for the rookie genin have made their decisions, it is not up for debate. Let's move on to the non-rookie nominations."

As Gai stepped forward, Kakashi whispered, "I'll expect an apology by the end of the Exam."

Gai scowled at him and then announced that his team would be entering the Exam.

ooo

Naruto's smile as he headed home at the end of the day had very little to do with the accuracy with which he threw the blunted toy weapons at Konohamaru and his friends, nor with how clever of hiding places he was able to find during the hide-and-evade portion of their game. No, as fun as playing ninja with rambunctious eight year olds was, nothing could overshadow his excitement over the fact that at long last the time for the Chuunin Exam had arrived. No more waiting and wondering, no more nights of making plans that may or may not ever be needed or used. Finally he could get on with the thing he'd been looking forward to since practically the moment he'd realized he was in the past.

Orochimaru would be there, Naruto would be there, and Orochimaru would be completely unprepared to meet up with someone like Naruto.

And if the Chuunin Exam was going to be announced soon, that meant that Gaara would be arriving soon as well. He might have arrived already even!

The blond entered his apartment, changed out of his dirty clothes and then made himself some chocolate milk, enjoying the fact that he actually had _good_ milk to drink – something he would never take for granted after his clone had been forced to drink that old disgusting stuff while Naruto headed for the Wave Country.

Naruto quietly sipped the milk from a chipped mug and stared out his window at the night sky. Gaara was out there, somewhere – either in this village or traveling towards it – suffering through the madness that came with the neglect and loneliness of their childhoods. He was lost in the darkness, struggling to find a reason to exist.

Needing a friend.

Naruto wanted to be that friend, wanted to leap from the window and hunt his fellow jinchuriki down and help him, show him the way... but he couldn't. Gaara wouldn't accept it, Naruto remembered that much from the first time around.

More than that, Gaara was his enemy right now. He was on Orochimaru's side. If Naruto managed to find him and tried to talk him out of doing what he was doing, tried to explain that Orochimaru was tricking Suna, it would only let his enemy know that he'd been discovered. It would change things and maybe cost Naruto his one good shot at changing the future.

And yet, Gaara was suffering terribly, even if he didn't know it. He wasn't insane… at least not exactly… he'd just reached the only _sane_ conclusion he could in a life as messed up as the one he'd lived through. Naruto remembered his own horror when he realized how easy it was for him to understand Gaara worldview, how perfectly logical it was for the two of them.

Another problem (as if he needed any more) was that despite how easy as it was for him to remember and understand where Gaara was coming from, he couldn't totally remember what he'd done to show Gaara that things didn't have to be that way. He'd fought Gaara to protect Sakura and, to a much lesser degree, Sasuke back when Orochimaru had first attacked and somewhere in there Gaara had seen something or felt something that had changed his whole worldview… but he'd come up with it on his own after their battle and they'd never really talked about it as adults. Because Naruto wasn't totally sure what he'd done to show Gaara that there was a better way, he wasn't sure how help his future friend. Was it just the lengths he'd gone to, the way he'd eclipsed what should have been his limit, just to save his friends or had Gaara taken a deeper meaning from it? Short of putting Sasuke and Sakura in harms way, he couldn't recreate the events that had changed Gaara.

What sort of friend would he be if he put two people he loved in danger like that? Then again, what sort of friend would he be if he left Gaara floundering in the darkness?

Naruto drained the last of his chocolate milk, set the mug down, and then ran his fingers through his hair. He was from the future, in full possession of all of the jutsu and a good portion of the power of someone who would have been Hokage, with knowledge of major events that would shape the whole ninja world, and was still left feeling impotent to help one of his good friends because he couldn't remember the details of something that had happened over twenty years ago for him.

He'd already learned his lesson when it came to putting too much faith in his knowledge of the future and trying to recreate events, but it was still annoying that things that had worked out really well might not have the same success because of his little time traveling adventure.

"Damn it," Naruto grumbled as he rose and put his mug in the sink and got ready for bed.

The day had started out so well, too.

ooo

As expected, over the next several days, more and more ninja and representatives arrived from the different countries of the continent, congesting the streets and filling the restaurants. The Chuunin Exam was a time of high tension, but curiously also carried a feeling of celebration with it. The hidden villages didn't always get along, even when they were considered allies, so having so many foreign ninja in such close proximity to each other made for a potentially explosive situation. At the same time, the Chuunin Exam was a celebration of the relative peace that had spread across the ninja world since the end of the last Great Ninja War and the addition of so many new faces brought a flood of business to the shop and restaurant owners of the village.

For the younger ninja and villagers, most of whom hadn't been around long enough to have seen the last time Konoha hosted the Chuunin Selection Exam, this was a time of great excitement. They were relatively immune to the suspicions and tension the older ninja felt at the sight of former enemies and potential _future_ enemies wondering the streets of their hometown. Instead of warily trying to keep an eye on any and every unknown entity in their vicinity, they were allowed to openly gawk at the village's guests, many of whom wore strange or interesting outfits and a few of the braver ones even tried to speak to the newcomers to find out what life was like in other villages.

Naruto did not share in his peers' excitement. For him, a great many things were all coming to a head at once and he was beginning to feel nervous about his chances of doing everything that needed to be done. To make matters worse, his village was infested with ninja who were not _potential_ future enemies, but simply _were_ future enemies in his eyes. He'd fought against almost all of them – or members of their villages at least – while they were allied with Orochimaru in some form or other. Those alliances hadn't happened yet, of course, but that didn't mean that they hadn't been all too willing to attack his home just because a madman promised them a cut of the loot when it was over.

He'd nearly attacked people on two separate occasions when he rounded a corner and unexpectedly found himself face to face with a member of an enemy village from his past. They'd no doubt felt his killer intent even as he apologized for bumping into them and stepped around them to hurry off to somewhere safe, but they couldn't do any more about it than he could. To preserve the peace, any and all confrontations resulted in the most severe punishments allowed under the treaties. It was the only way to keep things from descending into anarchy or to have the Exam blow up into a full scale war.

And so the week dragged by for him and his teammates. They were given very few missions because the village didn't accept as many during this time, needing to keep as many ninja as possible within the village to ensure the safety of everyone. Kakashi trained them, of course, but not for nearly as long as he had been and not nearly as hard, either. Naruto understood that this was because he was letting them rest for the Exam, but Sasuke and Sakura felt neglected and started spending several hours everyday training by themselves in whatever secluded spot they could find – unfortunately it normally took a couple of hours just to find such a spot with the all the other ninja that were suddenly around.

It wasn't until the sixth day that they were asked to meet Kakashi on a bridge near their old training grounds. He'd told them to meet him there at seven in the morning, but they didn't even bother showing until closer to seven-thirty. Even thirty minutes late, they were still stuck waiting for him for over an hour. It wasn't abnormal, but Sakura had apparently woken up on the wrong side of the bed that morning and was in the mood to take Kakashi's usual tardiness personally.

"How can this be allowed?!?" she yelled when the wait finally got too much for her. Several civilians stopped and stared at her, and then quickly hurried along, "Why does Kakashi-sensei ask us to meet him and then make us wait!?!"

Naruto nodded in agreement while Sasuke shook his head and rolled his eyes at them.

"What about me?" Sakura continued, "What about the feelings of a beautiful young woman who didn't get to blow dry her hair this morning?!?"

Naruto tilted his head to the side and frowned thoughtfully. "Yeah, it does look a little messier than usua, but I bet if you hurry you'll have time to go fix it before Kakashi-sensei gets—"

Her fist passed through the spot his head had been a fraction of a second earlier, but from the moment the words had started exiting his mouth he'd known that in her current mood she wouldn't appreciate what he was going to say and took a precautionary step back just in time. She was annoyed and tired and he was provoking her; even in the future the combination of those things generally put her in a violent mood.

"Oh, come one, Sakura-chan," he laughed as he leapt onto the bridge's railing as her foot shot out and nearly took his legs out from under him, "I was only joking. You're hair looks beautiful this morning…" he flipped off the railing and landed on the other side of Sasuke, pulling the dark haired boy in front of him for protection, "…_radiant_ even."

Sasuke frowned and shook his head again. "Why does every conversation have to end up with the two of you fighting?" he asked.

Sakura colored and opened her mouth to point out that Naruto's stupid comments always started the fight and that their conversations _rarely_ ended with the two of them fighting, but before she could, Kakashi called out, "Morning, people!" as he landed on a rooftop above them.

Naruto and Sakura, both glad for the distraction turned towards him and simultaneously yelled, "You're late!"

Kakashi scratched the back of his head with a hand that was holding three slips of paper. "Sorry about that. Today I got lost on the road of life…"

Naruto shook his head. "That doesn't even make sense!"

Kakashi hopped down from his perch, and his mask shifted in a way that told them he was smiling. "Anyway," he said, dismissing any accusations of lying or tardiness, "I know this is sudden, but… I've nominated you guys for the Chuunin Selection Exam."

Sakura and Sasuke's eyes widened while Naruto's face lit up with a huge smile.

"You did what!?!" Sakura yelled after a moment to digest the information. The missed sleep and lousy morning had her emotions all over the place. "If you think that this makes up for…"

Kakashi held out the papers in his hand. "Here are you applications."

Naruto and Sasuke snatched the papers from the jounin's hand so fast they seemed to have vanished. Naruto's hands were trembling with excitement as he rubbed his fingers a long the thick parchment and traced the Hokage's seal that adorned the top.

"This is just a nomination," Kakashi told them as Sasuke passed one of the sheets to Sakura who was quickly calming down and now looked a little pale. "Whether you take the Exam or not is up to each of you. Those who wish to take it should sign those papers and turn them in at Room 301 in the Academy by 4 P.M. tomorrow." He took a moment to look each of his students in the eye and then said, "That's all for today." In the blink of an eye, he was gone.

Naruto looked up from the paper at the spot the jounin had just been and smiled. "Couldn't he have just given these to us at lunchtime instead of making us wake up and meet him?"

Sakura glared at Naruto, but only because Kakashi wasn't around anymore to be the object of her annoyance, and then the three genin set off towards the village's main street where they, through unspoken agreement, planned on finding an uncrowded restaurant so they could have breakfast together.

While they walked, Naruto couldn't keep the skip out of his steps. He'd been waiting so long for this, that it was hard not to feel excited in spite of the fact that he had been growing more and more nervous about his chances of success the closer they got to the Exam.

Sasuke gave a half smile at his friend's exuberance. "There are going to be a lot of strong guys in this thing," he noted.

Naruto flashed him a large smile. "You're not scared, are you Showoff?"

Sasuke's half smile became a full blown grin. "Not on your life."

Naruto's eyes shifted to Sakura. "Sakura-chan, you ready to show everyone how awesome you are?"

Sakura's smile was nervous, but she still nodded and smiled. "It'll be fun," she said somewhat half-heartedly.

Naruto let out a contented sigh, folded his hands behind his head and looked up at the clouds as they floated through the blue sky. "Fun doesn't even begin to cover it," he said wistfully.

_'Naruto and Sasuke-kun aren't even a little scared,'_ Sakura realized as they continued to walk. _'They're so excited about this. They aren't even considering _not_ entering.'_ She watched them for a moment longer and then looked down at the form again, swallowing hard.

Sakura had read a while ago about the Chuunin Exam while doing research into what life as a ninja would be like. She knew that there would be team based tests and individual skill tests in the form of matches against other potential chuunin. The team stuff would probably not be too difficult for the three of them. With Sasuke's genius, Naruto's impressive power and skill, and her intelligence, she didn't think there'd be too many things that they couldn't potentially deal with. It was the individual portion she was worried about.

'_Even though I train extra with Sasuke-kun all the time,'_ Sakura thought miserably,_ 'I was almost useless during the Kogane mission… Naruto beat Kamui, Sasuke was able to defeat Sayaka, and I…I just sat around bleeding. How could I possibly handle the Chuunin Exam?'_

"Sakura-chan?" Naruto called back to her, waking her from her thoughts. "Are you coming?"

She hesitated and glanced to the side, her house wasn't far from here. She could go home right now and enjoy some of her mother's wonderful cooking, leaving the boys to whatever they were going to do the rest of the day…

"I'm coming," she said weakly as she jogged after them.

Naruto grinned and winked at her knowingly, giving her the strange impression that he'd read her nervousness on her face and guessed its source. "Good, it's no fun without you."

Sakura wasn't completely sure if he was talking about the restaurant or about the Exam. Sometimes Naruto seemed to know what was going through her head without her having to say anything – and other times he clearly had no idea what she was thinking and usually said something stupid as a result – but whatever he was talking about, she'd decided. These were her boys, her men. Wherever they went, she would come to. She'd known that about Sasuke since she was ten years old, but there was no denying that it was now true with Naruto as well.

They were her dear friends. She'd travel with them to the ends of the Earth and back.

ooo

That night Naruto sat quietly in his apartment, running through the "plan" that he intended to use to save the future. Over the past week or so, he'd given real consideration to going to Kakashi, or even Sarutobi, and laying everything out in the open. Once they knew what was going to happen, they probably would have set up some sort of trap for Orochimaru – perhaps a dozen or more jounin and ANBU waiting to attack him before he even reached the village or at least waiting for him in the forest during the second test.

The problem with that plan was that Orochimaru, even back this far, was scary powerful. Some might survive the attack – which he thought would probably have a fifty-fifty chance of killing Orochimaru – but many would be killed. People who should have lived longer, impacted other people's lives, gotten married or had children would be killed before their time. When he'd realized that he could have gotten Team Eight killed, he'd felt the guilt of endangering future generations, even wondering if he hadn't destroyed the lives of thousands of people, this had the potential to be even worse than that.

After much debate, he'd decided that he would leave that option on the table – some things were even more important than protecting future generations that didn't exist yet – but wouldn't use it as his primary plan.

As selfish as it sounded, he felt that he should be the one to deal with this problem. Orochimaru hadn't, technically, done anything to most of the people in the village – aside from several families that were missing members because of his experiments and one unique experiment that had managed to survive – however, he had actually _killed_ Naruto and had caused the destruction of a great many people and places in a future that Naruto remembered as part of his past. This wasn't about fiddling around with people's lives or trying to help them be better in the future, this was about survival and, almost as importantly, _revenge_. In Naruto's eyes, he was the one who had suffered the most from Orochimaru's ambitions, he _deserved_ to have the first shot at him.

Plus, he was only a genin and Orochimaru would dismiss him as unimportant until it was too late. And, if he died, no future descendents would be snuffed out as a result because he'd never even considered having children.

There, however, was the crutch of the matter: _If he died_. If he died, no one would no what was coming. No one would realize the danger that Sasuke was in until it was too late. No one would be there to protect people from Gaara. No one would be there to protect Gaara from himself.

Naruto sighed and got himself some paper and a pencil. It was a weak plan, as far as contingency plans went, but it would have to do. Every other option he could think of could potentially cause changes that he didn't want and wouldn't be able to predict.

He sat down and began writing, scratched out his first attempt and threw it away, and then tried again. It took six attempts to get it down in a way that he thought would work, but he got there in the end.

_Sarutobi, _

_ You are in danger. Orochimaru is in the village and planning to place a curse seal on Uchiha Sasuke. He's created a jutsu which allows him to transfer his soul into a new host body and Sasuke is the next body he wants. To this end he's allied himself with Sunagakure and has probably already killed the Kazekage. When the Third test begins, he will be sitting right next to you, waiting to strike. Do not let him! If I've failed and Sasuke already bears the curse seal, you must kill him without pause. As much as I love him, Sasuke will defect to Otogakure if he thinks Orochimaru can help him become strong enough to kill Itachi._

_How I know all of this is difficult to answer other than to say that all of those things have already happened from my point of view. I don't have much in the way of proof – even less, if I am now dead – but will tell you this much. I know that you summon monkeys. Orochimaru summons snakes and has a variety of jutsu that allow him to mimic many of their abilities and movements. Tsunade-baachan likes to use a genjutsu to make herself appear younger than she is, is a chronic (and bad) gambler, summons slugs, and spent much of her childhood beating up Jiraiya. Speaking of Ero-sennin, he summons toads, has a weakness (to put it mildly) for women, and is the author of the Icha Icha series. More importantly, he trained my father – the Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato – and has been busy keeping tabs on Orochimaru since his defection from the village. In that regard, he is probably familiar by now with an organization known as Akatsuki which is looking for the nine bijou and which Orochimaru was briefly a member of. Your three students are collectively known as the __Densetsu no Sannin, a name that Jiraiya claimed they received after surviving an attack by some big, important guy from __Amegakure whose name I never cared to remember. Kakashi-sensei knows my father's incomplete personal jutsu, Rasengan, though he is unable to manipulate its nature, just as my father and Jiraiya were never able to do. His Sharingan eye came from his friend, Uchiha Obito, who was killed during the last great war, as do his views on teamwork._

_I don't know if this is enough to convince you, but hopefully it will at least put you on guard. If I've failed, then I've already paid for it with my life, please, let mine and Sasuke's be the last ones taken by Orochimaru's ambition._

_Your servant,_

_Naruto_

Whether it would be enough or not, it was the best he'd been able to come up with. It was probably cowardly to warn Sarutobi in this way, after his death so he wouldn't have to deal with any of the consequences, but he wasn't willing to miss his chance at taking out Orochimaru just because it might be more honorable (and smarter) to come clean at this point. Orochimaru had killed too many of his friends and ruined too much of his life for him not to deserve this shot at revenge. If it worked out, he promised never to be so selfish again, if it didn't…

Well, his selfishness would hardly be anything for him to worry about by that point.

Naruto looked over the letter once more, then folded it up inside a couple of other pieces of paper to insure that it would not be easily read and sealed the bundle with a small lump of melted wax. A moment later he was out the door, determined to do what he needed to before he thought the better of it. There was only one person he would trust with something like this – and even then there was probably only a fifty-fifty chance that the letter would remain unread until his death.

Naruto went to Iruka's house and handed the confused – and sleepy eyed – chuunin the letter. It took a little while to get an adequate promise out of his old teacher that the letter would only be taken directly to the Third if Naruto happened to die during the Exam, and that if he died it would be _instantly_ taken to the Third, but in the end Iruka swore and Naruto left him to get back to sleep. He was sure that Iruka would be sorely tempted to open the letter himself and that he would be confused why Naruto would be writing such a letter or thinking about his own possible death, but he hoped that Iruka wouldn't argue his way into feeling like he _needed_ to know what was in the letter and left it alone.

Iruka was honorable and almost always kept his word, but in the end he was still a ninja.

Whatever happened, it was out of Naruto's hands. From here on out, his eyes would only look towards the final battle against Orochimaru.

o

o

A/N: Sorry this is a little late, my week got real busy on me unexpectedly.

I had this whole long rewrite of the Team Seven – Sand Trio confrontation that I wrote a while back and was really happy with. Naruto had a pretty funny line, he was confident, he made Kankuro look kind of dumb… he was basically Kakashi-cool and everyone (or at least Sakura and Konohamaru) was totally in awe of him and his awesomeness. Then, when I started rereading/finalizing these preChuunin Exam chapters and realized that the odds of Naruto and Konohamaru angering a more mature Sakura in the same way on the same day that led them to running into the Sand Trio at that exact same spot where impossibly small, it just didn't make sense. So I sadly cut nearly two thousand words that I was really happy with and had to totally rework a lot of things (about half this chapter used to be in the next one, which means that half of the next one used to be in the one after that). Sad, sad, but life goes on. I'd rather have it be logical (at least in my own mind) than keep my little pet scenes… especially when some of the better parts of the dialog can be placed elsewhere and still work almost just as well.


	22. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Chapter 21

o

Sakura had made her decision, but that didn't mean that she felt any less queasy the next morning as she and Sasuke stood outside the Academy waiting for Naruto to arrive so they could go inside together. All around them genin of various ages and nationalities were stretching or talking quietly in small groups, some were even relaxed enough to make jokes and laugh, though they were in the minority. Most of the ninja around them were older, much older, in fact, and a few gave them funny looks as if wondering why little children were hanging around the door as if they actually expected to go in.

She'd known that most ninja remained genin until they were in their late teens, sometimes even into their twenties and thirties, but she hadn't realized just how out of place she and Sasuke would look. Sakura tried to smile at a few of those who glanced her way, wanting to at least appear more confident than she felt while silently cursing Naruto for not showing up as early as she and Sasuke had. Her smiles were not returned nor did they seem to garner her any goodwill and she quickly stopped bothering.

It was funny to think that the last time she'd been in this building was when she and Sasuke had been waiting for Naruto and Kakashi when their class was broken down into teams. She'd been almost as nervous then as she was now, though for an entirely different reason. Back then she'd wanted Sasuke to talk to her, both because she hoped the conversation would lead to deeper feelings on his part and because she needed the noise to settle her nerves. Now she was glad for the lack of conversation so she didn't have to worry about accidentally revealing how scared she was to him… and so she could concentrate on not throwing up all over his feet.

Just when she thought she could take it no more, Naruto came strolling down the street, hands in his pockets and smiling like he didn't have a care in the world. "Good morning, Sakura-chan!" he called out in a singsong voice that earned him several annoyed glances from the older genin in the area. His eyes shifted from her to Sasuke as he added with a nod, "Showoff. Get enough beauty sleep?"

Sasuke grunted and gave their blond friend a smirking smile.

Now that Naruto was with them, they could – or, in Sakura's case, were forced – to enter the Academy with the other genin teams who were there for the test.

The hallways inside were as crowded as she'd ever seen them, maybe more so since the bodies of those filling the hallway were much larger than the twelve and under groups that were usually there. Sasuke took the lead, not hurrying, but not letting himself be pushed aside either, while Naruto and Sakura trailed in his wake.

"You okay, Sakura-chan?" Naruto whispered to her just loud enough to be heard over the conversations going on around them.

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

"Don't worry," he told her, giving her a friendly pat on the shoulder, "you're a lot better ninja that you think. It'll be fine."

As strange as it seemed, his simple encouragement was enough to lift her spirits, if only slightly. She was certain that the words would have meant more coming from Sasuke, but Naruto was a good runner up and she found that his faith in her restored some of her faith in herself. Suddenly it was a little easier to breath and the bile that had been swirling in her stomach settled a bit.

Sakura took a deep breath and smiled at him, her first genuine smile of the day. She started to thank him, but before she could, they came to a sudden halt as the sounds of a struggle could be heard up ahead.

Hurrying forward, they found a large crowd gathered outside of room 301. Two boys who didn't look much older than Team 7 were standing in front of the door. One had long, spiky black hair that stuck out in a way that made Naruto's hair look tame and odd white marks that looked like tape on his cheeks and chin, while the other wore a blue bandana style hitai-ate and a bodysuit under his lose fitting clothing that extended all the way up to his chin. They were saying something, but it was difficult to hear them over the murmurings of the crowd.

As Team Seven made their way forward, Naruto and Sakura still following Sasuke's lead, they quickly spotted what the commotion was about. A young, brown haired girl wearing a pink cheongsam and dark pants with her hair done up in two buns was lying at the feet of the two Leaf-nin. Even thought the girl's back was partially to them, Sakura could see that she was rubbing her left cheek gingerly where a dark bruise was beginning to form.

The spiky haired ninja's eyes passed over the crowd, openly challenging anyone to step forward and defend the girl that he had obviously just struck. When his challenge went unanswered, he smiled and said, "Listen, we're being _kind_ here. The Chuunin Exam isn't easy… my friend and I have already failed it three times. We've seen people quit as shinobi after taking this exam, we've even seem people _killed_ during the competition. Besides that, chuunin are often used as captains of military teams, they're responsible for the success of a mission, the death of a comrade, all of it…" He looked down at the girl and then over at a boy in a green bodysuit who was also on the ground at the edge of the crowd and shook his head, "Do you honestly think that little kids like you two are ready to handle all of that? Do you think anyone would want to follow _you_ into battle?"

Naruto was frowning slightly as he nudged Sakura with his elbow and whispered in her ear. "How many flights of stairs did we come up?"

Sakura looked at him and blinked in confusion, not sure why he would bring that up now of all times. She'd still been a bit unsure of herself before, now she totally convinced that this was a mistake. As she turned back to the two ninja blocking their way, her eyes caught sight of the door sign again. Something about it bothered her. She shook her head and tried to think of what could be wrong with something that clearly wasn't out of place…

The spiky haired ninja's companion smiled politely at those gathered around them and said in a soft, reasoning voice. "We're just thinning out those who will fail or worse. What could be wrong with that? There's a good chance that we are saving the lives of those of you who have… overzealous… jounin."

Naruto's question passed through Sakura's mind again and the answer to what was wrong with the door sign clicked. "We're only on the second floor!" she announced, surprising those around them as well as herself with her outburst.

Sasuke glanced over his shoulder at her and gave her one of his rare, real smiles… or at least 'grins'… "Good job, Sakura," he said as he turned back towards the two ninja who were also smiling. "Now get rid of this genjutsu and get out of our way."

"Ah, so you noticed it, did you?" the bandana wearing ninja said with a chuckle. The sign that read 301 shifted out of focus and was replaced by the 201 that it should have been.

The spiky haired boy grinned and licked his lips. "Hmm, not bad, but all you did was…" he spun low, planting his hands on the ground as he brought his right foot up towards Sasuke's face, "…see through it!!"

Sasuke saw the attack coming and brought his own leg up to counter it, but before either could connect, the green clad ninja who had been lying on the floor was standing between the two of them, his hands already outstretched to catch both of them at the shin. It was over in the blink of an eye, leaving most in the area gasping at what they'd seen.

Sakura's eyes widened as her brain finally caught up with the action. This boy with the weird clothes and shiny black hair in a bowl cut was faster than anyone she'd ever seen and he'd blocked both Sasuke and the other ninja's kicks with his bare hands like it was nothing. He'd completely changed from the timid boy she'd spotted when they first arrived.

She heard Naruto chuckle and glanced at him. His eyes were dancing with delight and a happy smile was plastered all over his face. He was, she realized as she let her eyes slide past him to scan other faces in the crowd, the only one who didn't seem at all shocked by what he'd seen.

_'Of course he's different from everyone else,'_ she thought with a smile as she turned back to Sasuke who was staring at the bowl cut ninja with a strange expression on his face, _'Naruto's a one of a kind… thank goodness.'_

The boy let out a slow breath and stepped out from between the Sasuke and the other ninja. He took two steps back towards the crowd and suddenly looked a little bashful at the stares he was receiving. A genin with long black hair and the strange pale eyes that identified him as a member of the Hyuuga clan turned to him and said, "Hey, I thought we weren't going to call any attention to ourselves. It was _your_ plan, remember?"

Sakura recognized the new genin as Hyuuga Neji, the top ranked graduate from the class above hers at the Academy. There were rumors that Neji was a genius on par with Sasuke, but Sakura doubted such a thing could possibly be true… Sasuke was in a league of his own.

The bowl-cut boy shrugged apologetically. "Sorry, Neji-kun, it's just…" his round, innocent eyes shifted towards Sakura and his cheeks flushed.

The kunoichi on their team stood and dusted herself off, the bruise on her face miraculously vanishing. She looked from her teammate to Sakura and shook her head. "Oh, no, please, not this again…"

If he heard her, he didn't let it show as he marched resolutely up to Sakura and flashed her a toothy grin. "Hi, my name is Rock Lee, so you must be Sakura-chan." He winked and gave her a thumbs up as his smile grew wider. "Let's go out together! I'll protect you 'til I die!"

Sakura stared at him for a long moment, her mouth hanging slightly open but no sound coming from it. Next to her, Naruto snorted and covered his mouth with his hand as he tried to keep from laughing.

Lee held his pose for several seconds longer before his smile drooped and his hand fell to his side. "Um, did you hear me?" he asked.

"Uh… sorry, but… you're _really_ not my type…" she managed at last. "…at all… _really, _really not…"

"Eh, I think he gets it, Sakura-chan," Naruto said quickly before she could add more. He gave her a light push down the hall towards the stairs to get her moving as she still seemed too stunned to function on her own.

Lee hung his head dejectedly, his whole body sagging from his previous straight-backed pose. Naruto patted the boy on the back. "Hey, don't worry about her, Lee" he said cheerfully. "She's a bit hung up on someone else," he gave a small nod of his head towards Sasuke who was saying something to Neji, "but I have a feeling the two of you will be good friends someday."

Lee straightened quickly, his smile instantly returning. "Yes! Of course, friendship is the root of all loving relationships!"

Naruto shook his head. "No, that's not what I…"

But Lee had already turned and started marching in the opposite direction down the hall towards a different staircase.

Naruto sighed and looked to the heavens for help. "What am I going to do with these crazy kids and their out of control hormones," he asked the ceiling.

"Come on, Naruto," Sasuke said as he walked past him, grabbing the blond by the back of his jacket and dragging him down the hall, "we're leaving."

In Sasuke's wake Naruto saw a smirking Neji watching them as they headed for the stairs. "Did you play nice with your new friend?"

Sasuke smiled as he said, "Shut up. Where's Sakura?"

Before Naruto could answer, they were both grabbed by strong hands and pulled onto the third floor. "Naruto, Sasuke-kun! Let's go!" Sakura's confidence had returned, clearly bringing bountiful energy with it as she took their hands in hers and hurried them down the hallway.

As they neared room 301, they passed through an area where the hallway opened up into what was basically a long room with tall windows on one side and doors to classrooms on the other. The room was two levels high with a walkway and a second level of classrooms were located above the ones on the floor Team Seven was on. As Sakura pulled Sasuke and Naruto into this area, Naruto slowed, his hand slipping from hers. Something was going to happen in this room, he realized, though he couldn't remember what it was. His confusion was only momentary, however, as Rock Lee suddenly called out to them from the second level.

"You, with the dark eyes." Sasuke and Sakura looked up as well. "Will you fight me, right here, right now?" Lee hopped over the railing on the walkway and landed in a crouch after a four meter drop. He scarcely made a sound as he hit the hard wooden floor.

"Right now?" Sasuke asked, pushing his hands into his pockets and looking Lee up and down.

Lee jerked his thumb towards his chest, his face solemn. "My name is Rock Lee. When you want to know a person's name, you introduce yourself first, right, _Uchiha Sasuke_?"

Sasuke smirked. "I see you already know who I am."

Lee nodded his head ever so slightly. "You are the genius student of Hatake Kakashi and a member of the great Uchiha clan. For those reasons alone, I'd like to test my skills against you, but…" his eyes strayed towards Sakura who was standing next to Sasuke. Lee's cheeks colored again and he winked at her without moving any part of his face other than his eyelid.

Sakura was more coherent this time. "No way, no how," she told him with a shake of her head.

Undeterred, Lee blew a kiss her direction. "You are an angel!"

Sakura cringed all over and took a large step to the side so that Naruto stood between her and her admirer.

Naruto shook his head and sighed as he glanced over his shoulder at her. "Don't you think you're taking it a little too far?" he asked.

Sakura shook her head, but didn't reply.

"You know who I am, but you're still going to challenge me?" Sasuke asked with a confident grin. "You're a fool, but if you want to fight so badly, then let's do it. I'll show you what it means to have the name 'Uchiha,' _Thick Brows_!"

Lee held up one hand and waved for Sasuke to approach. "I feel that I should warn you, right now I am the strongest Leaf genin. You won't be able to defeat me."

Sasuke took a step forward, but was stopped when Naruto grabbed hold of his arm. "Sasuke, don't," the blond warned him.

"Why not?" Sasuke snapped irritably. "Fighting him sounds like fun."

Naruto opened his mouth to tell his friend that he stood no chance against someone like Lee, but the words didn't come out. Sasuke could probably use a little show as to the level he needed to aim if he wanted to compete in this exam and it wasn't like this fight had hurt him in the future… there was no reason not to let Sasuke get his butt handed to him. It might even be good for him. "Never mind, just… good luck."

Sasuke smirked and turned back to Lee. "I won't need it."

"We only have thirty minutes to get to the meeting," Sakura called out from behind Naruto.

"This won't even take five," Sasuke replied as he dashed towards the waiting Lee.

Naruto didn't remember the specifics of the Sasuke's fight with Lee, but he knew it wouldn't end well for his friend. Watching it for the second time made him wonder how Sasuke was even able to stay uninjured enough to take the first two parts of the Exam last time. Lee was so much faster than Sasuke it was like Sasuke was just standing still. He managed to block a kick and a punch coming at him, but it was obvious that he was barely keeping up. Only a few seconds into the fight, Lee swept Sasuke's legs out from under him and sent him tumbling across the room with a kick to the chest.

"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura yelled. She tried to push past Naruto to help her crush up, but Naruto caught her and held her back.

"Leave him," he told her in the firm, commanding voice that she'd heard him use from time to time when he really wanted her to listen to him.

"But…"

"If he wants help, he'll ask for it."

Sasuke got unsteadily to his feet and glared at Lee, completely ignoring his teammates.

"I've heard it said that you can't really know someone until you've fought them," Lee said with a smile as he straightened, one hand up and in the ready position, the other behind his back. "I know that you are a genius, Sasuke-kun, but because of that genius, you haven't had to work nearly as hard as one who lacks your natural talent." He turned and looked towards the hallway that led to room 301. "I can already see that my hard work has surpassed your genius. There is no point in continuing, you can't beat me."

Naruto frowned as Sakura stiffened in his arms. Something about this scene was different, somehow. Sasuke was supposed to lose, that much he knew, but this seemed unfamiliar all of a sudden, not excessively so, but enough that a strange sensation of dread began rumbling in his stomach.

Sasuke's face twisted in anger and he dashed headlong towards Lee. For some reason Naruto was suddenly reminded of Sasuke attacking Kakashi during their test, the results this time were not much different. Lee dropped down low and Sasuke's punch passed over his head and then spun and drove his left leg straight up, catching Sasuke under the chin and lifting him off his feet. It was the classic beginning to Shadow of the Dancing Leaf which Lee normally – in the future anyway – used as the opening of his Primary Lotus.

Naruto had seen enough. Sasuke was beaten and he would no doubt have learned his lesson from this. Primary Lotus could really hurt him and could get Lee kicked out of the Exam. In the blink of an eye, he crossed the space between himself and Lee.

The older genin's legs flexed as he prepared to leap after the soaring Sasuke, but before he could, Naruto's hand clamped down on his shoulder, keeping him on the ground. "You said there was no point in continuing," Naruto told him sternly. "This match is over."

Lee looked up in surprise and then nodded a small smile forming on his face.

Sakura was so shocked at Sasuke's completely lopsided defeat and by the speed with which Naruto had crossed the room to stop Lee from pressing his advantage that all she could do was watch as Sasuke flew through the air and then crashed to the ground with a sickening crunch. Naruto, who was looking down at Lee when Sasuke hit the floor, looked up in alarm, his eyes widening at the sight of the Uchiha laying crumpled on the floor.

For a moment, no one moved. Naruto looked from Sasuke to Sakura. This definitely hadn't happened the first time. Sakura's eyes slowly rose from Sasuke's prone form to Naruto's. He didn't ask her a question, but she seemed to take his shocked gaze as an accusation.

"I…" Sakura tried to explain. She knew she should have at least moved to catch Sasuke even if she probably wouldn't have been needed, but so many shocking things had happened in such a brief amount of time that her brain just hadn't been able to send the signal to her body to react. Naruto had moved from standing just in front of her all the way over to Lee in an instant and she'd never seen Sasuke taken apart so easily… she hadn't even thought it possible. To top it off, she'd never thought that he wouldn't try to protect himself from the fall. That was basic training for first year students. "I… couldn't…"

Naruto pushed Lee roughly aside and ran to Sasuke, carefully turning him over and helping his body lie flat on the ground. Sasuke's eyes were open, but he didn't seem to see Naruto or Sakura who were kneeling next to him, or even Lee who was standing just behind them. He just stared, unblinking, at the ceiling.

"You all right, Showoff?" Naruto asked, failing to keep the worry out of his voice. More than worry though, he was angry with himself. How stupid could he be? This was the damn bridge all over again! It shouldn't have been a big deal because Lee was a fellow Leaf genin, but he'd still let his vague remembrances of the future guide him and now…

Sasuke didn't answer.

Sakura gently ran her hands along his arm, ever so lightly pushing against the skin to feel for damage underneath. He hissed when she first touched his wrist, but then relaxed again until she reached his shoulder at which point his brow furrowed and his jaw clenched. Sakura looked up at Naruto and let out a slow breath.

"His shoulder might be dislocated and I think his wrist is sprained, maybe broken," she whispered.

Behind them, Lee stiffened. "Sasuke-kun… I didn't mean to…"

"It wasn't your fault," Naruto cut him off before Lee grew too upset. "He attacked you after you said the match was over, not the other way around. It's his own stupid fault for not backing down when he was beaten."

"Naruto!" Sakura yelled in shock.

Naruto ignored her, keeping his eyes on Lee. "You better head to the meeting," he informed the older boy, "my teammates and I need to decide if we're going to enter or not."

Lee nodded numbly, tried apologizing again, but was silenced by a shake of Naruto's head. "O-of course," he replied weakly and then turned and walked away.

With him gone, Naruto reached down, grabbed two handfuls of Sasuke's shirt and pulled the stunned dark haired boy up into a sitting position not caring how much pain he was probably causing his friend. "What's with that blank look, moron?" he demanded. "Why didn't you use your Sharingan?"

Sasuke blinked as if just waking up despite his eyes having been open the whole time. "What did you say?" he asked weakly. Sakura was staring open mouth at Naruto, unable to even object to his treatment of their injured teammate.

"Your Sharingan," Naruto repeated, "why didn't you use it? What the hell is wrong with you, getting your ass kicked like that? It's disgraceful! You think you can beat your brother with that lame-ass effort?!"

Sasuke's good arm lashed out and belted Naruto across the face, sending the blond tumbling away from him. "Who the hell asked you, asshole?!" he hissed. "I'll avenge my clan, even without the Sharingan!"

Naruto was stunned for a moment, but then he shook his head and slowly pushed himself into a sitting position. _'Even _without_ the Sharingan?'_ he wondered as he stared at Sasuke. _'What the hell does he mean by…'_

Realization crashed down on him like a ton of bricks dropped from the top of the Hokage Tower. Sasuke hadn't unlocked his Sharingan until sometime before the Exam the first time… and some change in events had prevented that from happening. It had to be the Wave Country mission; that was the only explanation. Sasuke had never said when he'd awakened his kekkei genkai, but none of their other missions were what Naruto would consider strenuous enough to cause it to awaken. It was only a guess, of course, but it seemed to make sense. Apparently the mission to Kogane hadn't been enough for whatever reason. Something had happened on the Wave Country mission that went beyond just fighting a dangerous enemy like Haku and Zabuza. Whatever it was, Kogane and the 'Collectors' weren't a good enough substitute.

_'This is bad,'_ Naruto thought as he tried to swallow a growing feeling of dread. _'This is really bad. How is he supposed to fight Orochimaru or Gaara if he can't use his Sharingan?'_

Sasuke glared at Naruto for a second longer and then turned to Sakura. "Can you set my shoulder?" he asked.

Sakura stared at him for a moment and then shook her head. "Sasuke-kun, you're too hurt. We can't enter the Exam with you lik—"

"I didn't ask about the Exam," he snapped. "I asked if you could set my shoulder. I'm entering this Exam no matter what!"

"Sasuke-kun, I don't…"

Naruto stood and walked over to them. "Do it," he told her. "He's made up his mind and we'll be there to help him if he needs it." He looked down at Sasuke and smiled weakly. "That's what teammates are for."

Sasuke's dark eyes held his gaze for a moment before his lips slowly turned up into a small smile. "I doubt I'll need it," he said smugly.

Naruto smile gained strength and he let out a slow breath he'd been holding. "Then we'll just watch your back and marvel at how amazing you are… of course, Sakura-chan will probably just be looking at your a—"

"Don't say it!!" Sakura yelled, clamping her hand over his mouth, her cheeks reddening.

Naruto and Sasuke both chuckled and then the Uchiha settled himself back on the ground with a small groan. "Please, Sakura, just set it quick so we can go show everyone what we're made of," he said softly.

Sakura looked like she might try to protest one more time, but finally just sighed and shook her head in resignation. "It's going to hurt," she warned.

"I can take it."

"Naruto, I'll need your help," she said as she gently took hold of Sasuke's forearm, carefully avoiding his wrist, and bent his forearm at a ninety degree angle from his body. "When I tell you to, grab him by his shirt and pull him towards you," she told the blond as she readied herself for what she had to do. Just as she was about to start, she had a second thought and untied her hitai-ate, causing her long pink hair to fall down around her face. "Here, Sasuke-kun," she said, placing the strap near his mouth, "bite down on this."

Sasuke took the strap into his mouth and then Sakura nodded to Naruto. Naruto pulled Sasuke towards himself while Sakura pulled the other way. She had to pull much harder than she'd expected to before she felt Sasuke's shoulder pull farther from the socket, the muscles in his arm tensing under her hands as the pain hit him. Their pulling only lasted for a second, before Sakura slowly turned his arm and felt it pop back into position. Sasuke whole body jerked as he swallowed a scream of pain and then he let out a shuddering breath that he'd been holding as his body slowly relaxed.

Sakura removed a roll of cloth from her hip pouch and quickly wrapped it up over his arm and around his body, creating a makeshift sling. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than nothing. With that done, she moved her fingers through the seals needed for Shuosen no Jutsu. Her hands glowed with the familiar green colored chakra as she placed them on Sasuke's shoulder and slowly moved them down to the wrist she had decided was probably only sprained, easing the pain and reducing the swelling. She couldn't completely heal him, only a true medical jutsu master could do something like that, but she could encourage the healing and help it along a little. She just hoped it would be enough to get him through the Exam.

As the green glow of the Mystical Palm slowly faded, Sasuke took a deep breath and gingerly moved his wrist within the sling. He let his shoulder remain immobile. "It's good enough."

"You have to be careful with it, Sasuke-kun," Sakura warmed him as she and Naruto helped him to his feet. "If you overdo things, it will pop out again and you might even hurt it worse the second time around."

Sasuke nodded and handed over her hitai-ate; she quickly tied her hair back once more with it.

"Oh, come on, Sakura-chan," Naruto laughed, "this is Sasuke we're talking about; I'm sure he'll just sit meekly by and watch us take care of everything for him!"

Sasuke shook his head and started towards the hallway which led to room 301. "Let's go," he said, fact that his arm was now in a sling seemed to totally slip from his mind. "This Chuunin Exam is going to be fun."

Naruto and Sakura exchanged bemused glances and then voiced their agreement as they hurried after him.

Kakashi was leaning against the wall next to the door to room 301, patiently waiting for them to show up. "You three seem to have had some trouble climbing the stairs," he noted calmly as he glanced at Sasuke's arm. "Are you going to be able to handle this, Sasuke?"

"I'm fine," the dark haired boy replied evenly.

"In that case, you all can enter."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sakura asked.

"The Exam can only be taken by teams of three, if Sasuke couldn't go on or" his eye shifted to Naruto for a second, "if one of you decided that this Exam would be too difficult for you… for _whatever_ reason, then none of you would have been allowed past this point."

Sakura folded her arms and frowned at the jounin. "You didn't tell us any of that when you gave us the entrance forms."

Kakashi cocked his head slightly to the side. "Didn't I? It must have slipped my mind. I suppose it was for the best. This way you're all here because you want to be and not because anyone feels pressured to come." His eye again shifted to Naruto. "This test will be pretty hard; you won't be able to hold back or pretend to be weaker than you are. You'll have to show everyone what you are capable of, but I think you can handle it. You are my proud team after all."

Naruto hated being under Kakashi's eye and was well aware of the fact that it had been happening more and more frequently lately. He supposed it was inevitable that Kakashi would begin to suspect _something_, hopefully he wouldn't think anything too horrible before the truth could be explained and proven – the proving part would probably take awhile – to him. As it stood now, however, Kakashi wasn't interfering or making threats, he was just letting Naruto know that he would be watched and that was fine. Once the team walked through the doors in front of them, Kakashi wouldn't be able to stop what was going to happen without stopping the whole Exam, something that hadn't even happened even when Orochimaru had been known to be in the village the first time around.

He'd played his cards right and now he was going to get his reward. His team would breeze through the first part of the Exam and then he would get his shot at Orochimaru and Kabuto. It had been a long journey, far longer than anyone could have guessed, but the goal was in sight.

Sasuke and Sakura looked at him and smiled, and then all three of them stepped forward and opened the doors.

Naruto's hands were already twitching with excitement as he stepped into room 301. By the end of the day, or tomorrow at the very latest, he would have saved the entire world.

ooo

It seemed that every eye in the room was turned towards them as they stepped through the double doors into the large classroom. Up until that moment, Naruto had forgotten just how little he and his teammates must have seemed to the other genin taking the test. Most of those in here had already hit puberty and passed through it to reach their maximum height, a few might even have _children_ who had already reached puberty. In short, they were adults and Naruto and his team must have looked like snot-nosed kids by comparison.

And it didn't look like the adults appreciated being joined by a couple of little kids.

It was strange not to feel the same anxiety and nervous energy that he dimly remembered feeling the last time he was in this situation. He'd spent the past several days pouring over everything he remembered from the Chuunin Exam. Fortunately he'd gone through a lot of exciting and interesting things, especially during the second part of the Exam, so the memories had stayed with him despite his usual forgetfulness. Most important of those memories was the identities and a few of the actions by the two large, dangerous snakes hidden within the room.

"Sasuke-kun!" a voice shrieked off to their side. Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke didn't even have to time look for its owner before a slender blond girl in a purple… Naruto supposed they would be called a shirt and skirt – though the skirt was more like two pieces of cloth hanging down from a belt, thankfully underneath she wore white wrapping from her upper body all the way down past the "skirt" – leapt onto Sasuke's back, wrapping her arms around his neck. "I was starting to worry you wou—"

To his credit, Sasuke didn't cry out in pain, but he did make a strange-sounding muffled groan as he recoiled from her touch, his free hand instantly going up to his wrapped shoulder.

"Ino!" Sakura yelled as she pushed the blonde roughly aside and knelt next to Sasuke, gently touching his shoulder to see if her former best friend had managed to injure him farther. Thankfully, the pain was only from being bumped and not from having the shoulder dislocated again. "What the hell are you doing?!" she demanded standing up and glaring at Ino.

Yamanaka Ino was not someone who was often quiet except when absolutely necessary, so it was a rare sight to see her staring down at Sasuke in stunned silence. Her inability to speak didn't last long, however. "What am _I_ doing? What did _you_ do to Sasuke-kun, forehead-girl?"

Sakura's hand clenched into a fist. "I'm not the one who jumped on his back, Ino-pig!"

"How was I supposed to know he was hurt? Sasuke-kun never got hurt before he was on your team! Did you run into him with your big, ugly forehead?"

For a moment, Naruto wondered if he'd have to break up a fight, but thankfully Sasuke saved him from the chore. "Shut up, both of you," the dark haired boy growled as he pulled himself back to his full height, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. "I'm fine."

The two girls started to protest their innocence in the whole affair when a bored voice said, "Looks like we aren't the only ones with an overly ambitious jounin."

Naruto couldn't help but smile broadly at the two genin walking towards them. Nara Shikamaru looked quite different from the last time Naruto had seen him – hardly surprising given that that was over a decade into the future from this point – he was missing the scars, the goatee, and the cloud of cigarette smoke that seemed to follow him around, but his spiky black ponytail, brown eyes, and bored expression were the same as always. Even knowing what he did about the future in general and Shikamaru in particular, Naruto still found it difficult to believe that a boy who looked like Shikamaru was actually one of the most intelligent people in the village, maybe on the whole planet. He just looked so… lazy… which, of course, he was at the moment.

Akimichi Chouji wasn't nearly as tall and the brown hair sticking out of the blue semi-bandana style hitai-ate (Naruto had occasionally referred to it as the "panty-style hitai-ate"… and had been smacked by Sakura more than once for it) was significantly shorter, but other than that, he was the same person. Fat – though no one was allowed to say it – happy, and stuffing his face with food. The sort of person who was often teased by his classmates in the Academy, but who was the most loyal friend a person could ask for once you got to know him.

Shikamaru took in the sight of Sakura and Ino fighting as well as the bandaged Sasuke and shook his head. "You're so troublesome, Ino."

Ino's response was a rather unladylike hand gesture, but Shikamaru was conveniently already looking elsewhere.

"How've you been, Shikamaru?" Naruto asked, trying to force down his grin and act like he was just another genin trying to appear calm and confident.

His acting apparently wasn't all that good because Shikamaru gave him a funny look before replying. "Fine, Asuma-sensei can be a pain though… but then you three are here, so I guess your sensei's the same way."

"Is this a private party, or can anyone join?" Inuzuka Kiba asked as he led Shino and Hinata towards the rest of the rookie genin.

"You're looking confident, Kiba," Sasuke noted with a smirk.

"You would be too if you'd gone through what we have since graduation."

Naruto flashed Hinata a warm smile and received a blushing one in return. He was pleased to see that even among such a large crowd of older genin she didn't seem to be quite as nervous as she would have been not long ago… that wasn't to say that she was jumping on tables and issuing challenges, of course, but she also wasn't hunched over or trying to hide behind her teammates, either. It was an improvement and that was all he could ask for.

While he was happily noting the small increases in Hinata's confidence, he missed the strange little smile that spread across Sakura's lips as well as the wink she gave Hinata that caused the girl to blush even more.

From Hinata, Naruto's eyes drifted to the top of Kiba's head where Akamaru was perched. The white puppy looked funny with the little black eyepatch over his eye, but seeing it for the first time caused a cold wave of memories of his failure on The Great Kaiza and Hinata Bridge to wash over Naruto. His smile fell and suddenly he didn't feel as confident as he once had.

"Are you alright, Naruto-kun?" Hinata asked stepping closer to him.

Her words woke him from the past and he gave her a half-hearted smile. "Of course, I just feel… bad… about Akamar—"

"No one asked you for your sympathy!" Kiba snapped, his eyes suddenly hard and his jaw set. "So shut the hell up about things you know nothing about!"

Naruto didn't reply right away, not wanting to allow his annoyance to cause him to say anything too stupid or, even worse, _revealing_. He'd known that Kiba was struggling with the guilt he felt over Akamaru's injury and looking at the dark haired boy now he could see how much it must have deflated his future friend's usually overwhelming confidence. Looking at it now, he wished he'd sought Kiba out and tried to do something to help him. Dealing with grief and guilt were things Naruto was used to with himself, but he'd never been great at offering comfort to others. He just didn't know what to say to make them feel better so he usually ended up just sitting with them saying nothing and feeling bad for not being of more use.

As he stared at Kiba and Akamaru, however, some _nearly _comforting words that Kiba had once told him sprang to mind as did one of the small plans that always seemed to arrive when he was in a pinch. "No one's allowed to feel bad that Akamaru got hurt?" he asked in an antagonizing tone. "Sorry, I don't give a damn if you don't like it, I _am_ sorry that Akamaru doesn't have two eyes anymore!"

Kiba stared at the blond in shock while Sakura and Ino gasped. Hinata reached out and touched Naruto's arm and whispered, "N-Naruto-kun, we don't… we don't talk about that."

"Why?" Naruto asked loudly, his eyes still on Kiba. "You can't pretend it didn't happen. Or does it make the baby feel better not having to think about Akamaru losing an eye?"

Kiba swung at him, not even worrying about the fact that Hinata was between them and would be in the middle of any fight that broke out. Naruto had expected if from the beginning, planned it really, and leaned back as his hand shot up, driving the knuckle of his thumb into the bottom of Kiba's arm, just above the elbow. There was a nerve located there, though Naruto had no idea what it was called. What he did know is that it hurt like hell to get hit there and it left the forearm feeling tingly and weak.

He grabbed the stunned Kiba by his arm and pulled him in close, ignoring the instincts that tried to command him to drive his knee into the other genin's stomach.

"I'm sorry you're still sensitive about it, but Akamaru's injury is reality," he whispered. Then he began quoting the words Kiba had used to try to help him get over the mounting losses in the future, "Shit happens. You prepare for it, you try to make sure it doesn't make too much of a mess, you clean it up afterwards, but in the end, shit happens. Nothin' you can do about it, but get on with your life." He pushed Kiba back towards Shino and gave him a feral grin. "You should be glad Akamaru didn't get hurt worse. Without him you'd probably be so weak they'd have to send you back to the Academy."

His last comment was a calculated risk. He hoped that Kiba would notice that he was being playful in his taunting at the end and giving a compliment to Akamaru, but with Kiba as upset as he was, there was a chance he'd just take it as another insult. It was possible, he realized a bit too late, that he'd just ruined any chances of them being friends in the future. They'd always tended to clash a bit – probably because they were similar in so many ways – and had always eventually gotten over it, but their fights had never been about anything this personal to either of them so it was unexplored territory.

For a moment no one said anything, even a lot of the older genin around them were quiet as they watched the mini-fight, but then Kiba smirked as he began rubbing his elbow gingerly and shook his head. "You're as dumb and annoying as ever. I don't know what Hinata-chan sees in you."

"I probably just remind her of a smarter, stronger version of you," Naruto grinned back.

"They're so loud," Ino said to Sakura when it was clear that the fight was over.

Sakura actually smiled, forgetting for a moment that she and Ino weren't supposed to be friends anymore. "Yeah, but it grows on you after a while."

The blond shook her head. "If you say so."

"You know, you guys should probably be quieter," another genin said as he stepped away from the older genin and walked over to the cluster of rookies.

Naruto recognized the voice instantly and his eyes narrowed as every muscle in his body tensed while he fought against the urge to draw a kunai and kill the man. He'd forgotten until just now that this was when they'd been approached by the traitor, but now that it was happening vague recollections of the memory sprang to the front of his mind. None of what he could remember about this meeting really mattered though, the only important thing was that after weeks of waiting, Yakushi Kabuto was finally within striking distance.

Kabuto pressed a finger against the bridge of his thin, black, round rim glasses pushing them higher up on his nose and shook his head. "Yelling like school girls, geez, what are you thinking?" he asked.

Naruto took a deep breath, trying to push down the emotions that were threatening to overwhelm him. He couldn't kill Kabuto here. In the classroom such an act would be murder and it would take forever to convince people he was actually protecting Konoha by doing it. Plus, there was no way he'd be allowed to participate in the Exam after killing a fellow Leaf ninja out of the blue like that and even if he somehow was allowed to take the Exam, Orochimaru would know that his plan had been uncovered and that Naruto was not the ordinary genin he was supposed to be. Once they moved onto the second test, however, it would be just an unfortunate part of the Exam. He'd waited this long, he could wait a little longer.

Kabuto's eyes met his and held his gaze for a moment. "Fresh out of the Academy rookies should try keeping their heads down."

Of course, just because he couldn't kill Kabuto didn't mean he had to listen to the grey haired traitor's lecture. "No one asked for your advice," he replied contemptuously.

"Yeah," Ino seconded, "just who do you think you are?"

Sakura elbowed Ino in the side and then told Kabuto, "Don't worry about Naruto, he's gets dumb when he hears good advice… and Ino's just dumb."

Kabuto took the insults and apology in stride, not looking the slightest bit upset or even concerned with either. "If they don't believe me, they should try turning around and taking a look," he replied with a grim smile.

Most of the genin did as he suggested, looking at the rest of the class to see that most eyes were still on them and few faces looked friendly by this point – not that they'd really looked friendly earlier. Naruto, however, kept his attention on Kabuto, taking in every detail of Orochimaru's right hand man and spy: the grey hair that was pulled back into a ponytail, the Leaf hitai-ate on his forehead, the purple top and pants with white undershirt, and especially the tan hip pouch that probably held a lot of the information that'd already gathered for his master.

"You should leave," Naruto said after a moment of sizing the older 'genin' up. The longer he looked at Kabuto, the harder it became to resist the temptation to rip out the man's throat.

The rookie genin turned back to stare at Naruto and Kabuto.

"Don't be rude, Naruto," Sakura hissed, smiling apologetically at Kabuto.

Naruto didn't hear her and wouldn't have listened even if he had. "Leave now or those other genin will be the least of your worries," he said in a voice laced with the killer intent he couldn't hold back any longer.

"Come now, Naruto-kun," Kabuto replied calmly, giving the blond a friendly smile. "I'm probably the only friend you rookies have right now. You all remind me of how I was when I first took the Exam."

"Is this your second try, Kabuto-san?" Sakura asked, trying to keep the conversation friendly and hoping that Naruto would stop acting like poor Kabuto had just stolen his last bowl of ramen.

"My seventh, actually," Kabuto answered with a shrug.

"Wow, you must know all abo—"

Before she could finish Naruto stepped in front of her, his right hand down near his kunai holster. "If you're that bad of a genin, why are you hanging out with us? We don't have anything to offer you, so why would you even bother talking to us?"

For the first time, Kabuto actually looked a little flustered. "I'm just trying to be nice. We're all from Konoha, after all."

"Are we?" Naruto shot back. "Well, _my_ team isn't so weak that we'd need handouts from a loser who can't pass a test he's taken six times. Whether or not you're from Konoha doesn't make you any less of a weakling. Leave. Now."

Kabuto looked around the group in confusion, but after Naruto's pronouncement that his team didn't need the help none of the other genin were willing to take a handout and most looked weary of him. Naruto didn't have to look at their faces to know what he'd find there. Except for Hinata and Sakura, who would be concerned about how rude he was being, none of the others – particularly Kiba and Sasuke – were humble enough to admit to needing help from someone who couldn't pass the test himself.

Kabuto's eyes returned to Naruto and narrowed slightly as his cheeks flushed a little. "Ah, well, sorry, I didn't mean to offend. I'll just wish you all good luck then. Who knows? Maybe this year will be my year. If so, then I hope to see you in the finals."

"I doubt it will even come up," Naruto replied evenly as Kabuto turned and beat a hasty retreat, "but I'm sure we'll see each other at some point."

With that danger averted, Naruto leapt up onto the nearest table and scanned the crowd. He could feel the eyes of his fellow rookie genin on his back, but he couldn't bring himself to look at them or open himself up to the questions about his attitude towards Kabuto that Sakura no doubt was itching to ask. He spotted Gaara almost instantly and stared at his future (he hoped) friend for a moment before his eyes moved on until they found what he was really looking for. As important was it was to help Gaara and kill Kabuto, the man with the long black hair who was the leader of the group of Grass-nin in conical hats near the front of the room was the real target. Orochimaru might be able to hide from everyone else behind that borrowed face, but Naruto knew who and what lay beneath. As soon as they were in the Forest of Death, Naruto planned on going straight after that team.

Passing the Chuunin Exam would be nice, just _surviving_ would be great, but taking out Orochimaru trumped everything.

"Alright!" a voice roared from the front of the room as the area was enveloped in an explosion of smoke. "Quiet down you worthless bastards!" The smoke cleared to reveal a large and varied group of ninja, each dressed in smart military dress with a Leaf hitai-ate adorning their bodies in some way. At the front of the group was a large, imposing man with a scarred face and a black trenchcoat. His head was covered in a black bandana hitai-ate that came all the down to just above his eyes, making his dark irises seem almost be a part of his uniform.

The man smiled wickedly at the genin in the room as they stared in silence and – in many cases – awe at him and then hurriedly sat in the nearest chairs. "Thanks for waiting. I'm Morino Ibiki, the examiner for the Chuunin Selection Exam's first test." He let his dark eyes slide over the genin for a moment and then continued, "We will now start the test. Instead of your current seats, get up and come pick one of these tabs," he held up a small piece of wood with a number cut into it, "and then sit in the seat assigned to you. Once everyone is in their place, we will pass out the test."

The genin hurried to comply, some looking more nervous than others about the announcement that they were going to have to take a paper test. As Naruto looked down at his tab and headed for his seat, he was disappointed to find that he wasn't sitting next to Hinata this time. He supposed there was no way he could have picked the exact same number as before… assuming she even picked the exact same number as before. It didn't really matter anyway. She would have no trouble with this test so his sitting next to her would only be a distraction for her when he didn't even bother answering a single question.

He walked back towards his seat, confidently smiling to himself until he saw just where he would be sitting. His smile vanished and his mouth went dry. He tried to swallow the rising fear that he couldn't deny, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and his mind seemed to go blank. He'd been prepared for most anything except what he was now facing.

The person sitting next to him during the first test would be none other than Orochimaru disguised as the Grass-nin.

o

o

A/N: A bit early since I'm going to be out of town until Saturday or Sunday and didn't want to miss my update time.

I must say, Lee is a pain to write. I don't want to make him into an idiot, because I don't see him that way, but it's wild, emotional outbursts are… hard… to make sound right. I dread when we get to the point where he starts showing up a little more regularly.

Well, this might be one of my more unfair cliffhangers. I mean, it's not like Naruto's going to have to fight Orochimaru right there, but that's still a pretty messed up situation he's suddenly been thrust into and then the chapter just ends. Sorry about that. With changes to past chapters that forced me to cut and past scenes from one chapter into earlier one, it just sort of worked out that this scene ends this chapter. Originally, all of the stuff from them entering the room through the end of the first test was contained in one chapter – making it nice and neat – but necessity forced it to be a little uglier.

Anyway, who saw Sasuke's little eye problem coming? I tried really hard not to call any attention to the fact that he didn't unlock his Sharingan during the Kogane mission, just on the off chance that some of you might forget/miss it and then would go "what the hell?" when he doesn't have it in the fight against Lee (I only got a couple of reviews asking about it so hopefully most of you were surprised). If you look back at the manga chapters, Naruto never sees Sasuke with the Sharingan during the Wave Country mission (being too busy lying on his back looking like he'd been hanging out with an acupuncturist) and Sakura is surprised when she sees them during the Lee mini-fight so apparently Sasuke didn't go proclaiming his _awesomeness_ from Tazuna's rooftop. I thought it was a rather clever little change that would have a pretty major impact on upcoming chapters even if it forces me to be a bit inventive in the next chapter.

As always, please review and let me know what you thought.

Cheongsam – This is the outfit Tenten wears. It's a body hugging one-piece dress that is worn by Chinese women and young kunoichi favoring dumpling-looking hairstyles…


	23. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

o

"Do not turn over your tests," Ibiki said as the last genin took his seat. "There are some special rules for this test and you aren't allowed to ask questions, so listen _carefully_." He picked up a piece of chalk and stepped in front of the blackboard at the front of the room. "I'll write the rules on the board as I explain so even if you don't hear me clearly you'll have no excuse for not knowing them."

Sasuke leaned forward, careful not to bump his left arm and stared intently up at the large man. Something about the way he was talking seemed off. Not allowing questions, the way he'd emphasized the word '_carefully,_' and the fact that he was actually writing all of the rules down left Sasuke with the impression that they were supposed to look for something beneath what was being said, it was just a matter of figuring out what that was.

"The first rule," Ibiki said as he began to write on the board. "You guys will start off with ten points. This test is made up of ten questions, each worth one point, but this test uses a subtraction system. If you answer all ten questions correctly, you keep your points, but if you miss one, you only get nine. Miss three and you lose three points, leaving you with a final score of seven.

"The second rule. This is a _team_ test. Whether you pass or fail will not be determined by your score alone, but by the combined score of everyone on your team. Each team will compete to show how many points they can hold onto from the initial score of thirty."

This rule caused an outbreak of murmurs and whispered complaints among the genin. Finally, someone called out, "That's not fair! Why are we being graded as a team?"

Ibiki's eyes instantly locked onto the speaker and darkened. "Shut up, you don't have the right, or the option, of questioning me," he told the genin in a low voice. "There's a reason for these rules, so be quiet and listen or leave." He waited for a few seconds, but no one got up to leave. "Now the third and most important rule. Anyone caught by the testing officers," he waved his hand to indicate the other leaf-nin that had appeared with him, "doing anything sneaky – namely, cheating – will have two points subtracted for every offense. That means there will be some – those who are too stupid to become chuunin anyway – who will lose all of their points during the exam and be asked to leave. We _will_ have our eyes on you guys."

He grinned smugly and one of the other officers leaned back in his chair, causing it to creek ominously. "Understand this: the pathetic ones who are caught cheating will be destroying themselves. As shinobi trying to achieve the rank of chuunin, have some pride in your work.

"And the final rule that you will all be interested in knowing is that those who don't answer any questions correctly or who lose all of their points and are asked to leave… will cause their two teammates to fail as well."

The announcement that the teams would have a combined score had caused murmurs amongst the crowd, the last rule created total, stunned silence.

Ibiki smiled at their response and then in an ominous voice said, "You may begin."

For the first time in many weeks, Sasuke wished that he'd been placed on a different team after getting out of the Academy. Sakura would be fine, of course. She'd gotten low physical scores in school, but her test scores had always been at the top of the class. Naruto on the other hand, was even more of an idiot when taking paper tests than he was any other time during their school days. Granted, he was an infinitely better ninja now than he'd been back then, but how much improvement in test taking – a skill that had no everyday application the way the rest of Naruto's increased skills did – could he possibly have made?

When he turned over his paper and looked at the questions, his heart sank even farther. There was no way Naruto would be able to do any of these unless he'd been intentionally failing the entire time they were in the Academy. Given the blond's depression whenever their tests were returned, Sasuke seriously doubted Naruto was just messing around back then.

He looked up and quickly located Naruto's back a few rows ahead of him. Naruto was sitting perfectly still; he was not leaning over his test or writing… In fact, Sasuke didn't think it looked like Naruto had even turned his test over. Apparently he was scared stiff, not exactly an encouraging thought given what was at stake.

_'There's nothing I can do to help him now,'_ Sasuke concluded as he looked down at his own test again, _'he'll just have to try to get at least one point while Sakura and I do what we need to make up for his low score.'_

Even as he thought that, however, he quickly realized that there was going to be a problem with that idea. Despite his great test scores in class, there was no way he could answer a single one of the questions either. He glanced over at the officers carefully watching them and scowled as one of them made a check on his clipboard. It was like they were expecting to the genin to cheat… Sasuke's eyes widened.

Of course they were expecting the genin to cheat! That was the whole point of the test and why cheating, while more heavily punished than just getting a question wrong, did not result in an immediate expulsion from the exam. The test was to see how well they could gather the information needed to pass the test.

Now if only Naruto would notice it, he might have a chance. Most of the skills he'd shown weren't totally conducive to surreptitiously gathering information in a setting like this, but he had to know something that would help him if he could just see what he was supposed to do!

Sasuke pushed thoughts of Naruto aside and began to make a plan of his own. Having the use of only one arm would hamper him, no doubt, but he was an Uchiha, nothing was impossible for him.

ooo

Naruto stared straight ahead, not even picking up his pencil, and wondered what he was supposed to do. He was sitting next to the man who was responsible for half the bad things that had ever happened in his life, the man whose actions had resulted in the deaths of Sasuke, Sakura, Shikamaru, Temari, Gaara… the list went on and on. What made the situation even more bizarre is that Orochimaru, one of the most evil men on the planet, was calmly taking a test in a pretend effort to become a chuunin!

Were the whole thing not so scary and infuriating, he might have laughed at the absurdity of it all.

Naruto knew he shouldn't be afraid of Orochimaru and he wasn't _really_ afraid, he told himself, just nervous. In his heart, however, he knew the truth. Orochimaru did scare him. For all his plans to kill the bastard, he was still afraid of the man who had so totally destroyed the lives of so many people he knew and probably millions he had never met. Orochimaru was a genius, like Kakashi or Shikamaru, he was at least as powerful as Jiraiya if not more so, and he was evil… really, really evil. There were jounin who had spoken of being terrified of Orochimaru even _before_ he left Konoha. Naruto had fought him, a couple of times, far more than anyone else he knew. He'd stood toe to toe with the Sannin and escaped with his life, but it had always been a very close thing. Most of those were before the world started getting really messed up, of course. He hadn't even known just how scared he should have been, but he'd learned since then.

Orochimaru hadn't just beaten Naruto during their last fight, he'd killed him… easily.

However, that was when Orochimaru had Sasuke's Sharingan and knew that he was going to be fighting someone of Naruto's abilities. He wasn't expecting a little kid or a screw up, he was expecting Jiraiya's protégé, the man leading Konoha. Things would be different this time. He could beat Orochimaru for the first time in his life. He could _kill_ Orochimaru.

But fear still twisted his stomach into a painful knot and made it hard to breath.

His right hand fell into his lap and he was extremely aware of how close his fingers were to the kunai in his leg holster. In less than a second he could have a weapon in his hand and drive it into Orochimaru's chest. It seemed like it would be such a simple thing to kill his enemy, but, of course, things weren't that simple.

If he killed Orochimaru now it would be labeled as murder and could have dire repercussions on Konoha's relationship with the Grass Country. More than that, the peace treaty that allowed Chuunin Exams to be held in different villages and tried to keep the great nations from making war with each other would have been broken by a member of the host village, so other villages could use the killing for their own political purposes.

When the mask was pulled away, perhaps they would see that the Grass-nin wasn't who he was supposed to be – though Naruto doubted any village looking for a reason to sully Konoha's name would care. Even that, however, might not be enough to convince them that the corpse was actually Orochimaru since he wouldn't be in the body that he'd worn the last time he'd been in Konoha.

There was also Kabuto to consider. He'd hardly just stick around waiting for all the facts to come out once he saw that his master was dead and that someone knew what they'd been planning. Kabuto was another genius, perhaps even smarter than Orochimaru – though not smart enough to know better than to graft some of Orochimaru's cells into his own body – he'd be able to elude capture and any tracking squads sent after him for years.

And finally, Naruto didn't want to be painted into a corner where he _had_ to reveal who and what he was just to keep from going to jail… or worse. When that happened, it would change his relationships with his friends, it would change his relationships with his mentors, and it would change the way the village looked at him. There really was no telling how any of those groups would treat him once the truth came out. He would have to tell some people at some point – Kakashi seemed to be reaching a spot where he was going to need to hear some sort of explanation for whatever strangeness he'd been observing – but he wanted to keep the number of people who knew down to just a few he could trust and who he thought could handle the information.

"Just a little longer," he whispered so quietly the words could scarcely be heard even by him, "just wait a little longer." His eyes drifted to his disguised nemesis and he swallowed hard.

Orochimaru's eyes shifted as he looked over at Naruto without turning his head and then returned to his paper.

Naruto also looked back down at his test, reading the questions in an effort to keep his mind off the nightmare that he was sitting next to. _'How sad,'_ he laughed to himself, _'Even though I was practically Hokage, I still can't answer a single one of these!'_

Despite his attempts at distracting himself, he felt his fingers twitch in anticipation of the movement that would end a lot of Konoha's future problems – even if it caused a lot of immediate problems. He took a deep breath and his hand didn't move towards his weapons. Glancing up at the clock he saw that it had already been nearly fifteen minutes, he only had another half hour before the final question and then however long after that until they all were told that they'd passed.

He could wait a little longer…

ooo

Kakashi sat quietly in the lounge that had been set aside for those whose genin were taking the Chuunin Exam. Across from him, Sarutobi Asuma and Yuhi Kurenai were quietly enjoying a smoke and a cup of coffee respectively.

Asuma was a big man who bore a striking resemblance to his father, the Third Hokage, though one had to have seen a picture of the Third when he was younger to really see the similarities. The two of them had had some sort of falling out a few years back and Asuma had left the village (with permission). During his time away he'd become one of the Twelve Shinobi Guardsmen, an elite group of powerful ninja who protected the Fire Country's daimyo. He still wore a sash around his waist symbolizing his eternal membership in the group. After working with the Guardsmen for a while, Asuma returned and he and his father had patched up their relationship as near as anyone could tell. Kakashi liked Asuma a lot, as did most of the village, though he rarely had a chance to work with him.

Kurenai was as pretty as ever, though she was fidgeting at the moment and kept looking at the door that would lead her towards the classroom where their genin were being tested at the moment. When she wasn't fidgeting, she was speaking quietly with Asuma about something that Kakashi wasn't bothering to pay attention to and, if he was reading their body language correctly, that was probably the way they wanted it.

Normally, Kakashi would have made small talk with his fellow jounin, or even teased them a little about his suspicions, but his mind was busy with other things at the moment.

Naruto was taking the first test right now and Kakashi wanted to see what the blond did. Would he act like the dumb little kid he normally appeared – perhaps _pretended _was a better word – to be, or would the other Naruto – the strange and unsettling one who seemed far more capable than he should – be doing something that no rookie genin had any right being capable of?

Kakashi didn't like things that he couldn't predict or understand. He respected the fact that there were things in the world that were beyond the scope of human experience, or at least of his own experience, but those things usually didn't seem to come out of the blue, and they also didn't usually involve the container for one of the most frightening creatures Kakashi had ever seen. If Naruto really was being influenced by the Kyuubi, there was no telling what he was capable of.

At the same time, the blond was the son of the man Kakashi respected above all others. How could he be suspicious of the only son of that man?

The Yondaime had been a second father to Kakashi and, along with Obito, had helped reconcile Kakashi with his memories of his deceased biological father. Few knew Naruto's parentage and those who did were forbidden to reveal it for fear that enemies of Namikaze Minato – and there were many – would extract their revenge on Naruto since his father was already dead.

It was confusing, both mentally and emotionally. Naruto could be dangerous, but he was also the last piece of Minato left on the planet…

"Do either of you know who's giving the test?" Kakashi asked at last, needing a distraction from his thoughts. Kurenai looked up in surprise at his sudden question, possibly having nearly forgotten he was there, but Asuma took it in stride.

"I heard through the grape vine that they brought in Morino Ibiki for the job," Asuma replied before taking a long drag on his cigarette. "Probably going to be pretty brutal in there…"

"Why?" Kurenai asked in confusion.

Asuma flashed a mischievous smile at her and said, "You're still a pretty new jounin, so I guess you haven't met him yet, but the man's a bit of a sadist. More than that, he's ANBU's torture and interrogation captain. The man can make people piss themselves just for fun."

"And they're letting him give a test to genin?" Kurenai was mildly alarmed at the thought of having her team in there with a man like that, especially Hinata who had only just recently begun to gain confidence in her abilities.

Asuma shrugged and chuckled. "Kakashi did say that it could be fun for the genin to be crushed… he might have gotten his wish."

Kakashi shrugged and looked over at the door. _'Ibiki, huh? Maybe when it's over, I'll have a word with him and see if he noticed anything about Naruto. A man like that wouldn't miss the sort of things I'm looking for.'_

ooo

_'I don't have any jutsu that can help me here,'_ Sasuke thought as he stared down at his paper, _'but there are lots of ways to gather information that don't require using jutsu.'_

He pondered it for a moment longer. Since he hadn't been forewarned about the first test, as he suspected some of the genin in the room had, he could only use what he brought with him into the room. Just using his eyes was out, naturally, it was far too obvious for the chuunin around the room to miss. The thin pouch where he kept his kunai was on his right leg. In addition to throwing weapons, it also contained a few exploding tags as well as a spool of thin metal wire that could be used as a trip wire or attached to his kunai and used to make the weapon more unpredictable.

The idea of using a kunai as a mirror and trying to copy a test that way wasn't bad. The problem with that idea was that the surface of the kunai was rough to keep it from reflecting light and catching the attention of an enemy. That alone prevented it from being used as a mirror, but there was also the problem of how to get it into position to see someone else's test and how to keep such an act from being noticed anyway.

The exploding tags served no purpose whatsoever in this case. Blowing up a table or chair wouldn't get him many answers and would probably just get him kicked out of test.

The metal wire was interesting. It was designed to hold a minor chakra charge, basically allowing for an attack to be guided by the wires if needed. He could probably use it to hit someone with a small jutsu and cause a commotion, but what good would that do?

Sasuke closed his eyes and let the plan start to form in his mind. Getting the wire out without being seen would be a problem, but not impossible. He was helped by the fact that there were two people between him and the closest chuunin officers as well as another on the other side of him. Any small movement under the table would be very difficult to observe. From there he could… well, he could move the wire until it was touching someone right next to him and then use a jutsu to cause a commotion. And then…

He wasn't sure. As he sat there with his eyes closed, thinking through the problem he gradually became aware of the sounds around him. Pencils scratching on paper as answers were being filled out. _Someone_ was getting answers, probably lots of someones. If these people were getting their answers and the tests were graded by teams, then even if he was able to get a few questions, it might not be enough to overcome some of these other scores. Sakura would do well on hers, probably, but Naruto would be lucky to get one or two answers, let alone enough to give his team a high enough score to move on.

If, however, one team was sabotaged, then that would increase the chances of his own team passing.

Sasuke smiled as his plan solidified. He continued listening a moment longer until he had identified which of the two closest to him seemed to be writing the most and then let his eyes drift towards the top of the test the genin on his right was filling out. The man was far older than Sasuke and strangely was wearing a beige tie and brown sweater-vest, but those things didn't matter, all Sasuke cared about was seeing the man's name. Once that was accomplished he looked down at his own test and began to write down wrong answers.

As soon as the old genin, whose name was Akamon Manabu, was finished with his test, he turned his paper over and breathed out a sigh of relief. Given his age, Sasuke was sure he'd taken the Chuunin Exam many times, so he was probably relieved that he was finally going to get through the first test. Unfortunately for poor Manabu-san, all his hard work was going to be for naught… if the plan worked.

Sasuke carefully slipped his injured arm out of the sling, letting it rest in his lap, and then gave a small groan of real pain and rubbed his shoulder gently with his right hand all the while moving his left slowly to the pouch on his right leg. After only a few seconds, he'd retrieved the spool of wire and returned his left arm to the sling, feeling grateful for Sakura's healing skills that allowed him even the small amount of near pain-free movement he was capable of.

First, he slowly let out the wire until there was a small amount under his chair. Then he concentrated chakra into his feet and stuck the wire to the bottom of his right foot. Slowly shifting his foot to the side, he pushed the wire until it was next to Manabu's leg and then lifted it up until it was nearly touching the man's skin. He owed the basics of this technique to Naruto and Sakura and the thought occurred to him that without them he would have been incapable pulling off this plan. He'd have to remember to thank them when they were allowed to talk to each other again.

Sasuke faked a cough, turned over his paper, and then coughed again, before feigning a relieved sigh. This was it. He held the spool in the palm of his hand and brought his fingers together to form the three seals needed for the small fire jutsu Kakashi had taught them on their first night away from Konoha when he showed them an easy way to start a fire. It wasn't as big or showy as Goukakyu no Jutsu, but Sasuke didn't want big and showy.

He also didn't want to kill poor Manabu.

Sasuke brought the wire up to his mouth, faking another cough, and blew down on it. He instantly felt the heat as the small, but hot, flames passed along the wire close to his body. It took a lot of self control not to flinch away from the burning sensation, but he'd known it was coming. Manabu did not.

The older genin gave a loud yelp and nearly fell out of his chair as his leg jerked away from the pain. Many eyes in the room turned towards him as he stepped out into the isle and slapped at his leg in an attempt to put out what he was sure was a fire that had been lit on his leg. All that he found, however, was a small red spot, barely even noticeable. With a sheepish grin and a few bowed apologies, he returned to his seat, making a point of looking at the ground to see if there was some sort of animal or object down there that had caused his injury, but finding nothing. He gave himself a little shake and sat back down.

On the outside, Sasuke was staring at the man with just as much confusion as anyone else in the room, but inside he was smiling. He'd switched papers with Manabu almost as soon as the commotion had started. All eyes had been on the older genin so it was unlikely that anyone had seen him. If they had, they would have called him on it instantly. Now he just had to change the name at the top of the paper so that there wouldn't be two tests with the name Akamon Manabu on them and he'd be set.

He changed the name, and leaned back in his chair feeling totally relaxed.

A few minutes later, Ibiki began to explain the tenth question.

ooo

Sakura listened with growing trepidation as Ibiki laid out what he called "The Rules of Desperation" which basically came down to having to wager the future of your ninja career on your ability to answer an unknown question. It was ludicrous! Several voices piped up objections to such a rule, pointing out that there were students who had taken the test before, but they were told that it was just bad luck that they had him for this test this time.

Sakura didn't fear for herself here, she'd answered all nine questions the test had thrown at her so far, she was certain she could handle one more, but her teammates were a different matter. Naruto especially could not have passed this test without cheating and if the tenth question was hard it would make finding the right person to cheat off of even more difficult.

Naruto had done some crazy things over the years that she'd known him, not the least of which was fighting the leader of a band of missing-nin only a few weeks ago, but would he be crazy enough to take this sort of chance with his dreams?

In the Academy he'd always gone on and on about becoming Hokage, surpassing all the ones who came before him. He hadn't talked about it as much lately, but she doubted he would have given up on something that he'd wanted so badly… not yet anyway. That dream could come to an end in this room though. All it would take would be one especially difficult question and his dream would be out of reach before he'd even had a chance to try for it.

It was so unfair it almost made her want to cry for her friend. If he stood up and made their team fail, she wouldn't hold it against him. It was perfectly understandable to give up to keep your dreams alive.

As Ibiki waited for any who wished to quit – and there were a lot of them – Sakura began to wonder how fair it was of her to force Naruto to give up. It only took one person saying they wanted to quit to knock the whole team out of the Exam. It didn't matter who quit, they'd all be saved from having to put their futures on the line.

Still more genin stood up and left, but still she hadn't heard Naruto's voice. He was on the other side of the room and a few rows back from hers, she only had to turn her head halfway to spot him out the corner of her eye. He was sitting perfectly still in his chair, his face white and his eyes round. Like a cornered animal that was hoping that remaining still would keep it from being detected.

Her heart went out to him.

As the numbers dwindled down to the point where there couldn't be more than fifty people left in the room, about a third of what they'd started with, Sakura made up her mind. She would sacrifice herself for Naruto. She couldn't bear the thought of his dreams being crushed so early.

Her hand went up. Ibiki looked at her and she stood, lowering her head. "I…"

"Sit down, Sakura-chan!" Naruto's voice snapped behind her.

She turned and looked at him, surprised to see him not looking scared anymore, but instead standing up and giving her a strange, happy smile even though his voice made him sound angry with her. "Naruto, I…"

"You can't go to the bathroom now," he told her with a wink, "Ibiki-san won't let you until you've finished the tenth question."

"If she wants to quit, you can't stop her," Ibiki calmly told the blond, obviously not buying it.

"She doesn't want to quit," Naruto shot back. "Sakura's kicking ass on this test, she just has a small bladder. You should see her during our missions; she practically has to go every five minutes."

Sakura scowled. It was time for the joking to stop. It was one thing to try to use it as an excuse, but there was no reason to keep pressing the matter when they were surrounded by strangers. Certainly this wasn't the place to start talking about _her_ bladder or bowel movements in any amount of detail… especially when those details _weren't_ true!

"Besides," Naruto continued, "she doesn't need to worry about quitting. She can handle the next question and so can her teammates, but even if we couldn't, she knows that our dreams aren't contingent on being chuunin… there's no rule that says the Hokage has to be a certain rank; he just has to be the best ninja in the village! Now quit messing around and give us the question before she pees in her seat!"

Sakura vowed to never feel sorry for Naruto again. In fact, she wouldn't even have to worry about feeling sorry for the idiot in the future because she was going to _kill_ him as soon as they were allowed out of their seats!

Ibiki trained his dark eyes upon her. "Are you quitting."

Sakura glanced at Naruto and forced herself to keep from turning all the way around to see Sasuke. "No, he's right, I just have to go…" her face flushed. '_Stupid Naruto!'_ "…to the bathroom. If we're going to get the next question soon, I can wait."

Ibiki shook his head and looked around, waiting for anyone else to quit, but it quickly became apparent that between Naruto's comments and the already thinned pool of genin, those who were going to quit had already done so. For a second, it almost looked like a smile appeared on the scarred jounin's face and then he said, "Good decisions. To those of you still remaining, congratulations on passing the first test!

ooo

Naruto took a deep breath and glanced at Orochimaru out of the corner of his eye. The bastard was actually smiling about something. Maybe he found the antics of pathetic genin humorous or perhaps he was just entertaining thoughts of how many people in the room were as good as dead when the Exam ended, but whatever it was, it was making him happy and that unnerved Naruto more than he'd thought it would.

In the background, he was dimly aware of the conversation and argument going on about what the tenth question really was, or why certain aspects of the test were handled the way they were, but he no longer cared about those things. They had passed, everything else that happened in this room was only delaying them from the real work that was coming up.

It was strange, he thought, that Sakura had tried to quit. Certainly with a brain like hers she must have been confident that she could answer any question they might have been given. He didn't remember her doing anything like that the first time around, but he'd been more concerned with trying to pull out a victory in the face of certain disaster. Maybe it was because he'd spoken up sooner last time, but he couldn't be sure. He'd wanted to wait until anyone who was going to quit had done so rather than galvanizing people to stay by telling Ibiki where to stick his little mind game. The less people there were for the second test the easier it would be for him to find Orochimaru and Kabuto and take care of them without any interlopers.

Naruto took another surreptitious glance at Orochimaru and gave his head a little shake, not even noticing the horrible scars and pockmarks on Ibiki's head as the jounin took off his bandana to show the genin the seriousness of the situations they could find themselves in when they became chuunin.

_'What if things go bad when I fight him?'_ Naruto wondered. _'Do things just go straight to hell or will someone else be able to fix them without my help?'_

He'd left the note with Iruka – which he dearly hoped would not be opened before he met Orochimaru and things were decided one way or another between them, but there was no guarantee that even the warning would be enough. The Third might survive his encounter with Orochimaru this time and the small war between Suna and Konoha might be headed off before it started, but if Sasuke succumbed to Orochimaru's curse seal and left the village seeking power… things might very well end up exactly as they had the first time around.

His thoughts were interrupted by a window shattering as Mitarashi Anko, the second examiner flew into the room, flew into the room and threw up a large, black tarp on which she had written: "Second Examiner Mitarashi Anko. Pay attention!"

Naruto shook his head and let his worries recede to the back of his mind for now.

As if anyone could help but pay attention to Anko with her loud entrance, fishnet bodysuit with flesh colored cloth underneath – whether this was to protect what little modesty she had or because some higher ups had objected to her running around practically naked, Naruto had never learned and never asked, some things were better left unknown – and the enormous flag she'd just pinned to the ceiling behind her. Anko was almost everything you automatically assumed about her: Strange, freaky, loud, and… freaky again.

She was an incredible ninja as well, of course, and had completely caught him off guard in the future when he first realized that she often felt guilty for Orochimaru's crimes as if she could have stopped him back when he was her mentor. Naruto strongly suspected that she was, to some extent, in love with Orochimaru. Not that she was looking for romance, obviously, but she knew the man on a level that few – if any – ever reached and every once in a great long while she seemed to miss those times they'd spent together when she was younger. It had, however, never stopped her from doing her duty or fighting against the Sound ninja he threw at them, so Naruto had never needed to pry into her personal feelings, but he couldn't deny the impression he'd picked up on.

Pushing his thoughts on Anko's possible feelings for one of the greatest villains in history aside, Naruto rose with the rest of the class and followed as she led them out of the Academy and towards the training grounds. Sakura gave him a rather dirty look as they followed along in Anko's wake, but that only lasted for a few seconds. Naruto was sure she would quickly realize why he'd done what he did even if she didn't exactly appreciate his methods.

His thoughts tried to stray towards the "what ifs" a few more times, but he didn't have time to worry about whether or not Konoha would be prepared should he fail. The moment where he'd have a chance to change all of history for the better was nearly upon him… that was more than enough to worry about.

ooo

Anko led the forty-eight genin who had passed the first test to Practice Arena 44, affectionately known as the Forest of Death. Standing in front of the tall chain link fence and looking up at the monolithic trees that were covered in moss and vines and whose occasional above ground roots were actually wider than most full grown men were tall had always given Naruto chills and not just because of the life changing events that had occurred there. Originally he'd looked at it feeling like he was looking into the past, because he was certain that the forest was as old as the world itself and that some of the trees within had been there all the way back before people even knew how to use ninjutsu. Later he'd learned that the forest was actually younger than the village. The trees had been a gift from some foreign dignitary that no one could remember to the First Hokage back when the village was originally formed. The trees had the ability to grow to what they now were, but the First, in a display of incredible power had used his unique kekkei genkai that could manipulate wood and turned the small trees into the ancient looking monsters that survived to this day.

Someone had once told Naruto what the trees were called – probably Hinata, Sakura, or Neji – but he couldn't remember anymore. He did know that there were a few unaltered trees growing near the Hyuuga compound – though, having been carefully cultivated and shaped, they weren't nearly as grotesquely impressive as the ones in the training arena.

Anko grinned at the looks on the crowd of genin's faces and began to explain the second test to them. Each team would be given one of two types of scrolls – after all members signed a release form in case they were killed during the test – and would be assigned a gate to enter from, keeping everyone evenly spread out around the circular forest. In the middle of the forest was a tower that they had to reach within five days, but before they entered the tower they had to have both types of scrolls – meaning that they had to battle another team and steal their scroll. Since the tower was only ten kilometers from any one gate, the problem wasn't in the time it would take to make the trip, but in surviving long enough to get a scroll and make it to the goal.

The only rules for the test, aside from reaching the goal with the requisite number of scrolls, was that you couldn't enter the tower without all of your teammates – thus any teams that had a member killed were automatically out – and you couldn't open the scrolls and look at the contents.

With the rules explained and most of the genin thoroughly disturbed, Anko looked around and smiled happily. She waved towards a small booth with a curtain pulled across the entrance and said, "When you've signed your forms, exchange them for your scroll and then follow one of the examiners to the entrance that's been designated for you."

She glanced over her shoulder at the dark, evil-looking forest and then turned back to them. "One last piece of advice… don't die."

Naruto had to hand it to Anko; she certainly had a flair for the dramatic. His eyes shifted to the group masquerading as Grass-nin and wondered if Orochimaru enjoyed watching his former pupil manipulating the crowd of genin.

_'Probably not,'_ he concluded as he signed his form and handed it to Sakura as their team stepped inside the small booth. _'He's probably only thinking about getting his hands on Sasuke at this point.'_ A small smile tugged at his lips. _'He's in for a surprise this time around.'_

The circumference of the forest was about sixty kilometers, so it took a little while to get everyone into position. With forty-four gates, but only sixteen teams Anko had the teams simply take every other gate. This meant that they were all separated by about two and a half kilometers when they started, which seemed like a much greater distance than it actually was.

Naruto tried to see where Orochimaru's team was being led, but they didn't pass any Grass-nin while heading toward their gate so he might have been all the way on the other side of the forest for all Naruto knew or he could have just been a few gates in the opposite direction around the perimeter from where Anko had explained the rules…

It didn't really matter, he had his mission and it had little to do with completing the test. It would be nice to be able to compete against everyone in the finals again, but that was of secondary concern.

When everyone was in position, Anko's voice called out from a radio the chuunin officer was carrying. "The second test of the Chuunin Exam begins…. now!"

o

o

A/N: First of all, thank you all so much for the reviews. I normally try to respond to all of them, but with traveling last weekend and the fact that by the time I checked my email I had something like 60 reviews sitting in it (and more on the way before I was in a spot where I could respond), it just got too overwhelming. If other chapters get as many as this one (94, I think was the last count) then I fear we've reached the point where the sheer number of reviews will make it very difficult for me to respond to everyone. If you ask a question in your review (or write a fairly long one), I'll still try to answer it, but please forgive me if I don't always get to you all… I do want to have a life outside of responding to reviews!

I kind of feel like I should apologize for this chapter being a bit shorter than most. I blame the unfortunate alterations to the last few chapters due to Gaara's delayed appearance for it. Actually, I added about fifteen hundred words to this without actually saying anything new… how bad is that? College professors always love my papers, but I fear that's more of a sad commentary on the professors than anything because I spend whole paragraphs (sometimes pages) saying things that could be said in a few sentence. That's why you pay your tuition, so you can learn to take as much time or space as possible saying as little as possible…

Anyway, hopefully the rehashing of Ibiki's test rules and Anko's instructions weren't too boring for you all. I tried writing the chapter without them, but it just didn't look right to me. If nothing else, they were pretty small portions of the chapter.

So, what did you think? It took forever for me to come up with a way for Sasuke to cheat. I sometimes despaired that I would end up with nothing and just have to focus on another character and let you all guess how he'd done it. Poor Akamon Manabu is a real character from the series. According to NarutoFan's biography section, he can be seen in chapter 43 of the manga or episode 25 of the anime. It was actually as I looked for characters that might appear in the Forest of Death that I came across his picture and realized that he would be the perfect way for Sasuke to get by.

Please review and let me know what you thought – or if you caught any mistakes, though I find that _highly_ unlikely. ;)


	24. Chapter 23

Chapter 23

A/N: Fair warning. This chapter is not as long as it looks. The bottom third is author's note and the original Gaara intro that was cut. I included it because several people had been asking to see it and I figured you could compare what was to what is… if you want to. Enjoy.

o

Chapter 23

o

Ibiki was quietly collecting the test papers when he noticed someone enter the room. Though he was instantly on guard, he didn't break his stride or turn around. He knew that chances were it was simply a Leaf chuunin or jounin, but there were also plenty of chances that it was someone less friendly. The village was full of foreign ninja at the moment, and more than a few of them had either crossed paths with him at some point and gotten lucky or knew someone who'd crossed paths with him and had not been so lucky.

"How did the test go?" Hatake Kakashi asked. "Anything interesting happen?"

Ibiki smiled to himself as he continued picking up the papers. A man like Kakashi coming to ask about something as trivial as a Chuunin Exam paper test when he was already aware of the fact that his team had passed? This conversation was sure to be interesting. "One of yours made it so that a few more passed than probably should have, but other than that, things went about as I expected them too."

"Was it Naruto?"

Ibiki lifted a paper and glanced over at the former ANBU captain, there had been something strange in the man's voice when he asked the last question. "The blond kid, right? The…" he paused long enough for them to both know what he meant, "Yeah, that's the one. He stopped the little pink haired girl from quitting. Made up some bullshit story about her just asking to go to the bathroom and then told me that his dreams didn't require him to be a chuunin since that isn't a prerequisite for becoming Hokage. Interesting guy you've got there."

"Was that all he did?" Kakashi's one visible eye was more focused than Ibiki had ever seen it while they were in the village and not on any sort of mission. The look on his face was the sort that he only wore when he was actually serious about something.

"Far as I know. I haven't looked over the officers' sheets, so I don't know what they caught him doing, but he didn't fail, obviously." Ibiki sized Kakashi up for a moment and then asked, "Is there something specific you wanted to ask about or should we just keep pretending this is a normal friendly conversation?"

Kakashi smiled and the intense look on his face faded. "I'm not looking for anything in particular," he lied, knowing that they both knew it was a lie. "I just wanted to hear how my more eccentric students handled a stressful situation."

Ibiki continued with his paper collection. Whatever it was that Kakashi was asking about was apparently something he considered sensitive, which – so long as Ibiki didn't see a way that it might endanger the village or anyone in it – was fine. When he finally reached the spot where Naruto had been sitting, he turned over the paper and frowned.

The paper was completely blank; the boy hadn't even written his name on it.

"You might find this interesting," he said as he held up the sheet for Kakashi to inspect. "The little turd didn't even bother writing his name, kind of strange. It would be weird enough if he just didn't know any answers or couldn't figure out a way to cheat, and still stuck around to take the last question, but about the only reason for not writing his name would be if he didn't think it was necessary. Like he knew what the real test was or something."

Kakashi's eye widened as something clicked inside his head. He'd thought almost those exact same words while his genin were taking the bell test. It had been like Naruto knew the answers and was just waiting patiently (or patiently by his standards, anyway) for everyone else to get there, even though there was no logical explanation for him knowing something like that.

"Thank you," Kakashi said distractedly as he turned to go. "This has been… enlightening."

Ibiki watched the jounin until he was out the door and then looked back at the paper curiously. Whatever Kakashi was looking for, he'd apparently found it on the blank sheet of paper. It was impossible to say what that meant, but whatever it was, he hoped it wasn't so important that he would hear about it later. Unfortunately, chances were that if it was enough to worry Hatake Kakashi, it was probably pretty bad.

ooo

Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke leaped easily from tree to tree until they were a good distance from the entrance and then founded a nice spot with a decent amount of cover to keep them from being discovered while they stopped and planned out their strategy.

"I can make a bunch of clones and have some of them transform so they look like you," Naruto suggested as options were being discussed. "They can spread out and keep anyone from finding us until we're ready to be found and anytime any of them are destroyed, I'll know about where it happened and what we can expect if we go there."

"That's a good idea," Sasuke agreed with a nod.

Naruto's fingers came together and a moment later they were surrounded by a few dozen clones, two-thirds of which instantly transformed into either Sasuke or Sakura and then headed out into the forest.

"Are you going to be okay having that many running around and maintaining the illusions?" Sakura asked. "It's no good to us if you're run out of gas before we even get into a fight."

Naruto smiled. "I could do twice as many and still have plenty of energy left over," he informed her with no small amount of pride.

Sakura's brow furrowed. "How can you have that much chakra to throw around like it's nothing?"

Naruto, caught off guard by the question, floundered for an answer for a second. "Um, I… I don't know. I've just always had a lot of energy."

Sakura accepted his lame response with only a slightly odd look and, thankfully, no follow up questions.

Until that moment, Naruto hadn't really thought about how or when he would tell his friends about the Kyuubi. They'd handled it well enough the first time around, of course, so there was no reason to think that they wouldn't do the same this time. Granted, Sasuke had already betrayed them by the time he found out and Sakura had, Naruto somewhat suspected, figured most of it out while he was away training with Jiraiya – certainly he couldn't remember her acting surprised when the truth came out, though they were a bit busy fighting for Gaara's life at the time. The others had mostly learned of it due to the fact that Akatsuki was becoming far more aggressive and they had to know why they needed to fight them.

The way it had worked out, Naruto had actually been spared from having to give some sort of big speech or explaining the hows and whys of the whole mess, but if everything went well during the Exam and Orochimaru was dealt with, he probably wouldn't be so lucky this time around. The trade off was easily worth it, even if it might be a bit troublesome. He'd never been great with the sort of gentle touch a discussion like that would probably require. It was just easier to come out and say what needed to be said in as simple and blunt a way as possible.

Somehow he suspected that "Hey guy, guess what. The scariest monster you can imagine is sealed in my stomach" would not be the best way to tell everyone.

None of his peers would hate him because of the Kyuubi, of course, but it might be a pretty overwhelming thing for them, especially if he just dropped the hammer without any warning. It would probably be best to wait until they were a little older and ready to deal with something that big. Plus, he wanted to make sure that his friendship with each of them had reached a point where they could accept something like that and still treat him the same.

Could Sasuke, Sakura, or even Hinata be there already? It was hard to say. Probably they weren't far off, but he had bigger things to worry about at the moment. Besides, thinking about them being ready to know about Kyuubi would only lead to him wondering if they weren't ready to hear the rest of his secrets and _he_ wasn't ready for that yet.

"Alright," Sasuke said, steering the conversation back on track, "we need some sort of plan for when we start looking to get ourselves another scroll."

Naruto stopped paying attention to the planning at that point. Truth be told, he couldn't care less what the plan for getting the scroll was, he wasn't even all that worried about passing this test – though it would be better if they did – the only thing that mattered was finding Orochimaru's team and, to a lesser extent, Kabuto's.

He was moderately sure that they hadn't run into Orochimaru on the first day, but that didn't mean that it couldn't happen this time. Any delay in the original timeline might have been as simple as him suggesting turning left instead of right or not complaining about some decision Sasuke made. There was no telling what little, seemingly insignificant event could drastically alter events as he remembered them… and no guarantee that he was remembering them perfectly now anyway.

The fake Team Sevens began making their way through the forest as soon as they were created. With luck, they would be leading away potential threats or at least tripping traps before the real Team Seven reached them, but their actual mission was to search for Orochimaru.

Once he knew where the Sannin was, Naruto would slip away and do what he'd wanted to do for decades: Kill Orochimaru.

ooo

Iruka was barely watching as his students ran through the drill he'd just given them. They weren't dong anything dangerous, so it wasn't such a bad thing that he was tired and distracted (of course, in an inept student's hands, even the simplest of exercises could be deadly), but chances were he'd have had trouble focusing even if his students were throwing sharpened kunai with exploding tags at each other. He just couldn't get his mind off of the previous night when Naruto had stopped by almost three hours after Iruka had gone to bed.

o

_"Naruto?" Iruka asked blearily as he rubbed sleep from his eyes. "What are you doing here? You should be resting up for tomorrow."_

_Tired as Iruka was, he could see that Naruto was extremely nervous and agitated. It was probably to be expected, given what Kakashi was going to let him do the following day. He'd known Naruto and his teammates wouldn't be ready for this, none of the rookie genin would be with the possible exception of Uchiha Sasuke._

_Naruto rubbed the back of his head and looked off to the side. Iruka had seen similar expressions on the young blond's face before and was reasonably certain that he knew what this one meant. Naruto had probably been planning this conversation in his head, and was just now realizing that none of his plans were very good and that it was too late to try to come up with something better. He tried not to smile at how easy it was to read his former pupil sometimes. _

_"I… uh, I need to ask a favor of you, sensei," Naruto said and then swallowed hard as he lifted a shaking hand that held a thick roll of paper. "If… if something happens to me… during the Exam, I need you to…"  
"Naruto, you don't have to take the Chuunin Exam if you don't want to," Iruka told him, again rubbing at his eye as he slowly came awake. "Just don't enter. Your teammates and Kakashi-sensei will understand."_

_"No!" Naruto nearly yelled and then grimaced sheepishly and said in a much quieter voice, "No, I want to enter. I _have_ to, it's… it's really important, but if something happens. If I… if I _die_, then—"_

_Iruka pinched the bridge of his nose, cursing Kakashi and his foolish overconfidence. Even if he was a ninja, Naruto was too young to be having thoughts like this! It was bad enough that his team had ended up on what surly should have been an A Rank mission, but now he was being entered into an Exam that, while more predictable, could be almost as dangerous and where he wouldn't have a jounin to help him through any fights to the death that he might be pulled into._

_"Naruto, don't take the test. This is insane. You shouldn't have to think about things like this yet. Give it another year or so and then enter when you feel more rea—"_

_"Iruka-sensei!" Naruto snapped in a strangely authoritative voice. "I'm not scared about the Exam. You have no idea how ready I am for that. I just… there's a chance that things could go badly in there," Iruka started to object again, but Naruto held up a hand and he fell silent, "and if they do, there's something that I need you to do for me." He held out the papers again, his hand wasn't shaking this time. "I need you to give these to the Third if – and only _if _– I get killed. Don't look at them, definitely don't read them, they're for his eyes only."_

_Iruka took the papers and looked down at them. "I'm afraid I don't understand."_

_"Sensei, please, just promise me you won't look at that letter and will take it straight to the Third if anything happens to me."_

_Iruka sighed and shook his head slowly. "Alright, I'll give it to Hokage-sama if something happens to you."_

_"No," Naruto said quickly, "that's not enough. You have to promise me, _really_ promise me that you absolutely will not look at it or do anything with it or even talk about it unless I'm dead. Please," Naruto was practically pleading now, "please, as weird as it sounds, this is the most important thing I've ever asked of you. I need you to swear on your honor… on your parents' honor… that you'll do what I'm asking you to do."_

_Iruka stared at Naruto for a long time. Until that moment, the letter had only been a disturbing sign that Naruto thought he might die in the Chuunin Exam, now he actually was really curious as to what was actually _in_ the letter that had Naruto so worried. What could a genin – albeit a very _unique_ genin – want to tell the Hokage that was so important that it could only be revealed upon his death? He almost asked, but the look on Naruto's face made him think the better of it._

_"Alright, I swear I will absolutely not do anything other than hand this letter to Hokage-sama himself if you die and not before," he said at last._

_Naruto let out a relieved sigh and smiled. "Thank you," he whispered. "I brought it to you because I knew I could trust you with it."_

_As weird as Naruto was acting, and as disturbed as Iruka was that the boy who had been simultaneously both his worst and favorite student was acting like there was a decent chance he would be killed during the Chuunin Exam, he was strangely touched by Naruto's words. He knew Naruto liked him, of course, and that he'd probably been one of Naruto's favorite teachers, but the way Naruto had said he knew he could trust him… Well, it made the weird promise and the late hour worth it… a little._

_"Okay," Iruka said with a yawn, "Why don't you head home? It's late and you have a big day ahead of you tomorrow."_

_A strange expression that Iruka couldn't identify appeared on Naruto's face as he nodded and turned to leave. "Sensei, you have no idea."_

_Iruka went back to bed, dropping the letter off in his desk and locking it. He was exhausted and he knew he would be busy the next few days since several chuunin – including himself – would be helping out with different parts of the Exam, leaving the Academy with only minimal staff until the second test was over. Unfortunately, sleep was slow in returning. Between Naruto's strange behavior and the mysterious letter, it took him another hour and a half before he finally managed to calm his brain down enough to drift off to sleep._

o

Even now, the whole thing seemed more like a dream than anything. Were it not for the letter that was still sitting in the top drawer of his desk when he woke – barely four hours after Naruto left – he might have believed that it actually _was_ a dream. Of course, if he had dreamed the whole thing, he probably wouldn't have felt nearly so tired now.

Iruka couldn't deny that he really wanted to open the letter and read whatever it was that Naruto thought was so important. It wouldn't be hard for a ninja to open it, read it, and reseal it as though nothing had happened, but he'd promised and he'd meant it.

On the other hand, something so important that it could only be known upon Naruto's death could be important right now. Knowing it might allow him to keep Naruto safe from whatever it was that he was apparently afraid of. Wouldn't it be better to break his promise and save his young friend than to keep his word and have to watch the poor boy be laid to rest with the other ninja who had died in service? Certainly there was just as much honor in saving lives as there was in keeping promises, more even. Perhaps…

Iruka shook his head, rubbed his tired eyes, and looked up at his students. "Moegi, stop talking to Konohamaru. Futabo, keep your arm in and use your wrist more."

No, he'd promised. He'd keep his word if for no other reason than because of the look on Naruto's face when he said he knew he could trust him.

Iruka wouldn't like it much and if Naruto was killed and the information in the letter could have kept him alive it would probably be enough to crush him to the point where he'd be worthless as a man and a ninja, but he wouldn't open the letter.

He would trust Naruto as much as Naruto trusted him.

And if Naruto did get killed, Iruka swore that he'd kill Kakashi for making the boy enter the Exam.

ooo

"I hope Sasuke-kun is alright," Ino said as a sudden scream echoed through the dark forest. She and the rest of Team Ten had come to what they concluded was a good spot to rest and for Chouji to have a little snack. They were all tired from running as fast as they could from a near fight that – despite outnumbering their opponent as much as possible – seemed certain to end in disaster for them.

Shikamaru sighed. It wasn't that he didn't hope Uchiha Sasuke was alright, he had nothing against the guy even if he wasn't especially fond of him, but certainly there were more important things to worry about at the moment… like their own survival, for instance. Their encounter with Hyuuga Neji had cemented the idea in Shikamaru's mind that they were probably the weakest team left in the Exam and therefore the most likely to get maimed or killed before it was all said and done.

He glanced up at Chouji who was standing on the roots of one of the many large trees that made up the forest. The exposed portion of the monstrous tree's roots alone were taller than he was and he doubted that even nine of the genin from his Academy class could reach all the way around the trunk if they joined hands. Chouji was thoughtfully munching on his chips and apparently staring off into space. If Ino weren't so loud, Shikamaru would probably have joined his friend in looking at nothing.

Suddenly, the fingers of the larger boy's left hand twitched and his head shifted slightly. Shikamaru sighed and looked up at the dark canopy overhead that let only a minimal amount of light to reach the ground. This was definitely not his day.

"I'm more worried about whether or not we're alright," he mumbled, intentionally scratching his chin and then stretching his neck in the same direction Chouji had turned his head.

"Sasuke-kun is stuck on a team with forehead girl and that dumbass, Naruto," Ino retorted, more to herself than anyone as she tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear.

Shikamaru decided that there was no point in replying to that. Not only would it be more trouble than it was worth, it would also probably lead to Ino making more noise than was advisable at the moment and would cause her to forget what she was supposed to be doing.

Chouji swallowed another mouthful of chips and asked from his perch above them, "So, what do we do now?"

Shikamaru shrugged. "I don't know. Let's go sit down or something."

Ino rounded on him, hands already on her hips. "No! We have to keep moving. If we just sit around someone might find us."

"If _you_ were quiet, it might have made it a bit more difficult for us," a haughty voice informed her.

The genin looked up into the branches of a nearby tree and found three young men staring down at them. Each wore a hitai-ate with the symbol for the Waterfall on it, marking them as citizens of Takigakure.

The one standing in the middle of the group rubbed his brown goatee and grinned predatorily. "Well, well, little kids like you should know better than to make it so easy for people like us who actually have a chance of passing this test. You should have been hiding or something.

"Bah," Shikamaru grumbled, "I knew this was going to happen, _Ino_."

"What's that supposed to mean?" the blonde demanded.

"You're too loud," he replied pointedly.

"Well if you and Chouji weren't so lazy, we wouldn't have been standing here waiting to be found!" she shot back.

"I was hungry," Chouji protested.

"You're _always_ hungry!"

"You're still way too loud," Shikamaru replied in a bored voice.

"You've never shown a bit of motivation in your life."

"I don't consider that a bad thing."

Ino's face began turning a funny shade of red as her lips pulled back dangerously. "Well _you_—"

"Hey, as fascinating as this is to watch, would you Leaf-brats mind paying attention to what's going on around you? We're about to take your scroll, in case you haven't noticed, and if you don't hand it over quick you'll be losing more than just that. Catch my drift?"

"Che, sure, whatever." Shikamaru dug through his backpack and pulled out the scroll. "I didn't want to enter this Exam anyway, it's too troublesome."

The apparent leader of the Waterfall-nin stepped forward to receive it. "Lucky you. You're already out of i—"

"Kagemane no Jutsu… complete." Shikamaru grinned wickedly. "You didn't really think we were _that_ lame, did you?"

"Wha… what the hell?" the older genin demanded.

Shikamaru let his head roll from side to side, the enemy genins' heads imitating him perfectly. "You fell into our trap, dumbass."

"You weren't fighting," the man said as realization struck.

"Shikamaru's annoying, but I'm not _that_ loud," Ino told him with a smile, Chouji and Shikamaru glanced at each other – causing the three Waterfall genin to look to the side also – but didn't comment on her claim.

The man tried to move again. "What is this?"

Shikamaru looked down, forcing the three Waterfall-nin to do the same. "See those shadows? Even in dim light like this I can catch you with Shadow Imitation if you get close enough to me. We just needed you to think we were handing over our scroll to get you in range."

The leader of the other team growled. "So what are you going to do with us now? This technique forces you to stay this close to us and you can't keep it up forever. Sooner or later we'll—"

"We'll have taken care of you long before then," Shikamaru grinned. "Ino?"

Ino formed the appropriate seals, and brought her hands up in front of her face, peering through them at one of the Waterfall genin. "Shintenshin no Jutsu!"

The ninja to the left of the apparent leader suddenly jerked ever so slightly as Ino sagged into Chouji's waiting arms.

"Ino?" Shikamaru asked, not wanting to release the enemy until he was certain.

"I can't believe your plan actually worked," the man replied in a slightly girlish voice as the shadow began receding from him. He quickly checked his pockets and the backpack he was carrying and then moved onto those of his companions.

"It had to be better than 'Operation Hide and Hope He Doesn't Notice Us' and 'Operation Let Ino Seduce the Enemy,'" Shikamaru replied.

"That first one was _your_ idea!" the man growled as he finally found the scroll in the leader's backpack. "And the second one should have worked. Maybe Neji just doesn't like girls."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes. "Maybe he just doesn't like you."

"Houki? What the hell are you doing!?" the leader of the Waterfall team demanded.

"Houki-san isn't here right now, you'll have to ask him later," the man replied with a snicker. He held up the scroll and looked at it, "Damn, all this work and it wasn't even worth it. They just have the Earth scroll."

Shikamaru shook his head, mirrored by the remaining two genin still trapped in his jutsu. "I guess we should have known it wouldn't be this easy."

"What are we going to do now?" Chouji asked.

"We'll follow the plan, of course," Houki/Ino replied. "They won't just take the scroll back and let us walk away after this."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes. "He didn't mean that. He was talking about how are we going to catch the next ones, this probably won't work all that many times. We just got lucky that these three were idiots."

Houki stuck out his tongue at Shikamaru. "Even though it was your plan, it should still work. We'll just go somewhere else and set it up ag—" Ino was interrupted by the sound of bodies moving through the underbrush to the west and then three people stepped into view, each wearing a Suna hitai-ate.

"Ah, I should have know only a bunch of annoying brats would be making that much noise," the tallest of the three new comers grumbled. He was wearing an all black outfit with a matching hat that gave his head a distinctly cat-like shape and what looked like kabuki face paint. On his chest was a circle that had been split into purple and tan halves – the colors matched his face paint – and a strange wrapped object was strapped to his back.

The young woman who was with them shook her head, sending the four frizzy ponytails that held most of her dirty blond hair rocking back and forth, and rolled her eyes. "Who cares who they are?" she sighed. "Taking the scroll off a bunch of kids is the same as taking it off a team of adults." She turned her teal colored eyes towards Shikamaru and in a voice that expected no arguments said, "Give us your scroll, now."

Shikamaru held her gaze for a moment, just long enough to come to the conclusion that she was the sort of woman who was used to being obeyed (he'd seen similar looks from his mother over the years), and then let his eyes shift to the ninja who had spoken first and finally to the shorter, red haired boy who had remained mute thus far. What he found there was enough to freeze his blood. The red haired ninja, with the peculiar large calabash-shaped object strapped to his back and dark rings around his eyes was… Shikamaru wasn't sure what the boy was, but something in his ice blue stare promised death.

He held out the scroll for them to take.

The black clothed genin started to step forward to take it, but the girl grabbed him by the shoulder before he stepped within what Shikamaru figured to be his range. "Stop," she said. "Can't you see what he's doing?"

The taller genin gave her an annoyed look. "He's giving us the scroll without a fight."

"No," she replied like an Academy instructor explaining something basic to a particularly slow student (Shikamaru decided at that moment that he found her exceptionally irritating), "he's luring you into a trap." She pointed at the ground near Shikamaru's feet, "See his shadow? It's holding those other two in place. Look, they even have their arms up like they're handing something. It's Kageshibari no Jutsu."

Shikamaru smirked. Much as he hated to admit it, it was impressive that she'd noticed the shadow at his feet and guessed its use from the slight movement of the two Waterfall genin. Still, impressed as he was, he didn't have to be totally magnanimous. "Kageshibari , huh? How quaint," he chuckled, "you must be even older than you look. It's called Kagemane no Jutsu now, _baasan_."

The _young_ woman's face darkened and her eyes narrowed dangerously.

Shikamaru was certain that he'd pushed his luck as far as it would go (and perhaps farther than he should have) and quickly tossed the scroll Ino had procured from the Waterfall-nin to the girl. "There, it's yours," he said ignoring Ino's loud – and still masculine – protest. Shikamaru didn't want to fight these three. Actually, he didn't want to fight at all, but Asuma hadn't bothered asking him if he wanted to take part in the Exam, he'd just signed them up and told them to be there. He'd been holding the two Waterfall genin for a while now and it was beginning to tax his limited chakra supply, plus he wanted no part of the boy with the gourd on his back.

"Nice," the taller Sand genin said with a cocky grin, "now give us the other one."

"It's just another Earth scroll," Shikamaru explained, "it won't be of any use to you."

"Kankuro, let's just go," the girl said. "We got what we came for, there's no reason for us to keep playing with these kids."

"No."

Both Sand ninja turned and stared at the third member of their team as he spoke for the first time since they'd appeared. The boy's voice was as cold as his eyes and it sent a shiver down Shikamaru's spine.

"Gaara," Kankuro said in a suddenly quiet, nervous voice, "Temari's right, we got what we came here for, let's just head to the tower and be done with this stupid test."

"I don't like the way that one looked at me," Gaara replied nodding towards Shikamaru. "He irritates me."

Shikamaru took a small step back, not noticing that the still trapped Waterfall genin mimicked him. "I didn't mean any offense," he said softly, his mind racing for a way to get himself out of this dangerous situation.

Gaara's voice was perfectly calm. "I don't care."

"Gaara," Temari said in a hushed, meek voice that was totally different from the commanding tone she'd used earlier, "there's no need to fight. He didn't do anything wrong, why don't we just…"

Gaara turned his cold eyes upon her. "Do you want to die too?"

She paled and backed away, then glanced at Shikamaru and shrugged. "Sorry, you're on your own," she said with a smile as she gave him a little wave goodbye.

Shikamaru knew in that instant that his fate was sealed, giving them the other scroll would not save him… or Ino or Chouji either, for that matter. "Chouji," he said quietly, his fingers making a small motion that he hoped his friend would see, "give them the other scroll. It's in your backpack, right?" It wasn't, of course.

"But if I do that…" Chouji replied in a way that told Shikamaru he'd gotten the message.

Shikamaru swallowed hard, well aware of the trouble he was going to get himself into. "It's troublesome, but we don't have much choice in the matter."

Chouji gently set Ino's body on the ground and reached into his backpack, pulling out a small tube about the size of one of the scrolls. He started to walk towards Kankuro to offer it over, but before he passed Shikamaru, he took the tube in both hands and activated it. Suddenly the area was bathed in light as the flame from the flare burst into existence.

In a heartbeat Shikamaru had all three of the new comers trapped in his Shadow Imitation jutsu. He let out a slow breath. That was close. His team always carried alternate light sources since most of their attacks were dependent on him capturing their opponents with his shadow first, but for a moment he'd feared that a fight would break out before they were ready for it. He could plan things out several moves in advance, but with Ino's body still slumped over and defenseless and his own chakra running low, most of his plans had less than ideal chances of succeeding at this point.

The red haired boy neither looked surprised, nor worried at the sudden turn of events.

"Oh shit," Kankuro groaned, "now you've really done it."

Before Shikamaru could even start to wonder what the older genin was talking about, a cloud of sand slammed into his chest, sending him crashing into the tree behind him while simultaneously knocking the five people he'd held with his shadow away as well. Amidst the ringing of his ears and the groaning of his aching back, he was only dimly aware of the fact that his Shadow Imitation jutsu had been broken.

The two Waterfall genin not being controlled by Ino tried to attack the three Sand genin (perhaps hoping to get their hands on both of the scrolls the new comers had or maybe recognizing that they were in just as much danger as Team Ten), but were so overmatched that Temari and Kankaru simply watched as Gaara battled them single handedly.

Sick dread filled Shikamaru's stomach as the body Ino had captured was caught up in the swirling sand as well, but thankfully he saw her own body start moving as she released her hold upon the genin's body.

It was over almost before it started as the sand from Gaara's gourd swept around the three Waterfall-genin, trapping them and lifting them into the air in complete contempt for the laws of gravity. Gaara held out his hand and tightened it into a fist and the sand constricted around the three bodies. Shikamaru turned away, but could not close his ears to the short screams of pain and the crunching of bones.

Ino screamed in horror at the sight and let loose a barrage of poorly aimed kunai that were all intercepted by the sand that swirled around the small battlefield like a swarm of angry locust. Chouji formed the seals to perform his Baika no Jutsu, transforming into a comical-looking ball with just his head, arms, and legs sticking out. Then he pulled his head and arms into the large, "pleasantly plump" body and called out, "Nikudan Sensha!"

The transformation from human form to ball was complete, but anyone who had witnessed a member of the Akimichi clan use their Human Meat Tank technique knew that the funny appearance belied a truly frightening technique. The ball of Chouji began spinning fast and faster and then rolled towards the three Sand genin, effectively blocking both Shikamaru and Ino from view for a few seconds and insuring that there was a large distraction to keep their enemy from focusing on either of his weakened teammates.

Chouji struck a wall of sand head on as it sprang up around Gaara and for a fleeting second Shikamaru almost thought that his best friend's attack might be able to do some damage. Then, Chouji's rolling began to slow and finally he came to a stop. The moment he stopped moving, Shikamaru knew it was futile. Chouji was the strongest amongst them and Gaara hadn't even moved from the spot he'd been standing as he absorbed the Akimichi boy's attack.

There was a puff of smoke and suddenly Chouji was back to his original size and scrambling away from Gaara as the sand that protected him suddenly formed large spikes that cut into Chouji's shoulder and flank before he'd managed his escape.

Plans and counter plans began forming in Shikamaru's mind, as he watched the small fight, but they were disjointed and full of obvious holes that would doom them to failure. He looked up and saw the sand rushing at him again. The plans no longer mattered. He was going to die.

Just as it was upon him, something flashed through the sand, scattering it to the wind. "That's enough," a calm, familiar voice said with what sounded like a chuckle.

Shikamaru looked up and found Uchiha Sasuke standing over him. He vowed never to think badly of Sasuke or mock Ino about her obsession ever again. In fact, for the moment, he was considering developing his own little crush on the Uchiha… though he was sure that thought would only last until the danger was over. Looking to the side he could see that Haruno Sakura was in front of Ino and Uzumaki Naruto was between Chouji and Gaara.

He hated to say it, but Team Seven was definitely cool… and also exceptionally stupid.

"What are you doing?" he demanded of Sasuke. "You idiots are going to get yourselves killed!"

Sasuke glanced over his shoulder at him and gave him the biggest smile he'd ever seen on Sasuke's face. "Don't worry, there's exactly a zero percent chance him of killing me… at least right now," he said with an almost comical conspiratorial whisper. "We aren't really even here."

Shikamaru looked from Sasuke to Naruto to Sakura, noting the identical smiles that seemed out of place on everyone but Naruto. His eyes widened fractionally and then he nodded in understanding.

Not too far away from there, Ino was looking at Sakura in flabbergasted surprise. In fact, she was so shocked that she'd barely registered anything going on around her after Sakura had stepped in and easily knocked aside the sand that was coming to end her life. Now she was standing there as if she hadn't a care in the world, as if the fact that three men had been crushed to death at nothing more than the whim of the boy who was standing there glaring at them was nothing to worry about.

"Sakura," she whispered, "why did you do that?"

Sakura gave her a funny look and shrugged. "I couldn't just let my best friend die, could I?"

Ino's eyes widened at the words 'best friend.' It seemed like it had been an eternity since Sakura and she had been any sort of friends let alone best friends. Pride prevented her from ever saying that she missed her former friend these past two years or so, but now that Sakura was talking like the rift between them had never happened, Ino was… glad… and terrified.

"Sakura, that kid, he's not normal. You need to get out of here."

Sakura grinned. "Don't worry, I know all about him. It will be—"

A sharp spike made out of sand stabbed through Sakura's chest. Ino let out a choked scream, but quickly fell into confused silence when Sakura's body simply vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving a small log behind. The sand came at Ino again, but just before it reached her, Sakura's surprisingly strong hands encircled her waist and suddenly they were standing over by Naruto and Chouji.

Ino had never known Sakura was so strong and so fast. She'd promised that she would never lose to Sakura in anything, but now… she had some catching up to do.

"You know," Naruto told Gaara with an impish grin, "when the hero shows up at the last second, you're supposed to let him talk to his friends so they have a chance to be in awe of how amazing he is."

Gaara's face remained impassive, but the sand seemed to swirl around his feet with renewed intensity as if reacting to the agitation he refused to allow his face to show. "Who are you?" he asked.

Naruto smiled. "No one of consequence, but I'm sure we'll meet soon enough."

"We're meeting now, moron," Kankuro growled irritably.

Naruto's attention flickered in his direction briefly. "If that's what you want to believe, I won't argue." Then his eyes shifted back to Gaara's holding the red haired boy's gaze for what seemed like a long time. "I like your eyes," he said after a moment, "They remind me of a _tanuki_ for some reason," his gaze drifted down Gaara's body and a wicked smile formed on his lips, "though I doubt the similarities extend below the waist… then again, you were pretty popular with the girls of Suna…"

Gaara's ability to keep his face neutral left him as his jaw noticeably flexed and his eyes widened in surprise. Kankuro and Temari looked warily at him and even inched slightly away as if afraid that they might be caught up in whatever form his wrath was about to take.

Naruto continued to hold the Sand-nin's gaze, but said to those around him, "Ino, Chouji, get Shikamaru and get out of here. You'll need to find a good spot to rest and patch yourselves up before you try for another scroll."

Being rescued by a stronger, faster Sakura and told they were still friends was one thing, but Ino had no intention of letting Uzumaki Naruto order her around like he was her superior or something, especially not with Sasuke standing not too far away. "Who made you the boss?" she demanded.

Naruto shook his head, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like "kids," and then said, "Just go. I can deal with this."

Ino was prepared to make another angry retort, but Chouji grabbed her by the arm and quickly steered her towards Shikamaru while giving Naruto an apologetic smile.

Just as Team Ten started to make their retreat, Gaara's hand lunged forward as a huge cloud of sand swarmed towards them.

Naruto was between them in the blink of an eye, his hand making a quick chopping motion. The mass of sand that had been flying towards them suddenly divided in half as if cut by an invisible knife. Gaara's other hand came up, its movements controlling one half of the sand while the other was controlled by his other hand. He brought them apart and then began to bring them together as if preparing to clap.

The instant his hands were spread widest, Naruto's hand dipped into his kunai holster and sent three blades right at the red haired genin's head.

The sand ignored Gaara's commands and instantly moved to protect him, forming a shell around him and blocking the kunai.

Naruto smiled. "Don't be hasty. There will be plenty of time for that later." He glanced over his shoulder and nodded to Shikamaru that everything would be fine. Team Ten hesitated for a second, but ultimately made good on their retreat.

Naruto returned his full attention to Gaara. "Let's chat for a moment, shall we? I know what you three are up to. Don't do it."

Temari frowned. "Don't do what?"

Sasuke shook his head at her lame attempt to appear innocent. "These treaties are in place to stop senseless wars. I don't care how bad things are in Suna, you can make them better without going through with this idiotic plan. Konoha won't be beaten and Suna will come off the worse for it if you don't stop what you're planning to do."

"You're an annoying little brat, you know that?" Kankuro grumbled. "What makes you think we have any idea what you're talking about?"

"Fine, play dumb, I don't care," Naruto replied. "It doesn't matter what that snake has promised you, you'll regret it in the end. He'll betray you the second your back is turned, maybe sooner. Nothing good will come out of your alliance with him, so don't go through with it. I don't want to have to hurt you, but I will if it protects this village." He let his eyes rest solely on Gaara, "I know all about you, Gaara, I know what you're going through and how it feels to be what you are. I doubt you'll care much yet, but you and I are going to be friends one day, good friends. You won't need to be alone anymore."

Gaara's eyes narrowed and the killer intent that seemed to naturally flow out of him like water from a spring doubled in intensity. "I don't need friends," he informed Naruto quietly. "I've already got a reason to exist. I fight only for myself, I love only myself, and whenever I meet someone I want to kill, I kill them simply so I can enjoy the feeling of taking their lives. As long as there is someone in the world to kill, I won't need a friend because I will have a reason to continue living."

Naruto looked down and closed his eyes. "I'd forgotten it was this bad," he whispered. Then he looked up and a small smile formed on his lips. "Someday, I'll show you that you're wrong. I'll give you a better reason to exist."

"You won't live long enough to reach 'someday,'" Gaara said with a smile as the sand that he had been slowly moving across the ground suddenly reached up and caught hold of Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura, twisting its way around their bodies until they were almost completely cocooned. "This is the last moment that you'll ever see."

None of the three Leaf genin looked surprised or alarmed at the sudden trap that had sprung up around them. They all continued smiling their near identical smiles until Gaara squeezed his fist and said, "Sabaku Sousou."

The three Leaf genin vanished not the usual shower of blood as their bodies were crushed until they burst, but rather in three small clouds of smoke.

Temari and Kankuro inched farther away from Gaara.

For a moment, the red haired boy didn't say or do anything, but then the sand drifted back into its container and he turned and began walking towards the tower. His two siblings exchanged worried glances as they hurriedly followed in his wake. Gaara wasn't talkative and they hadn't expected him to yell or give any sign that he was upset by the fact that six people he'd planned on killing had gotten away, but the look on his face was one that promised death to someone in the very near future.

Neither of them wanted to be that someone.

ooo

On nearly the complete opposite side of the forest, Naruto suddenly rocked back on his heels and turned to the east. "Oh, that's not good," he mumbled.

"What's not?" Sakura asked from where she was acting as a lookout.

"We… well, _I_… just had a bit of an unpleasant encounter with some Sand-nin."

"How far away," Sasuke asked, suddenly interested.

"Too far to be worth it," Naruto replied with a smile, not adding that he had no intention of letting Sasuke or Sakura go anywhere near Gaara's team in a situation like this. Sasuke probably wasn't too far off from being able to deal with Gaara, though until he activated his Sharingan it would take longer than it had the first time around, but Sakura was definitely not ready for something like that.

As he examined the memories he'd just received, he came across an interesting little tidbit that his clone hadn't really paid much attention to – being more worried about not letting Gaara kill any of his friends at the moment. "Hey, Sakura-chan, can I ask you something?"

"What?"

"Are you and Ino fighting or something? I thought you two were friends."

Sakura looked confused. "Ino and I haven't been friends since…" her eyes strayed unconsciously towards Sasuke and her cheeks colored slightly, "…we aren't really friends anymore."

"Oh, um…" Naruto grimaced, "…sorry."

She knew him well enough to know something was up. "What did you do?"

He grinned sheepishly. "Well, she might think that you saved her and you might have said something about the two of you being best friends…" Sasuke coughed in what might have been an attempt to hide a chuckle. "… but you know," Naruto went on scratching his neck thoughtfully, "there's no real reason for the two of you _not_ to be friends."

Sakura shook her head and let out a soft sigh. "Things are just… complicated between us. I don't think we could really hang out like we used to."

Sasuke didn't bother hiding the annoyed snort he let out as she said that. "You're the one always going on about how friends can help each other, maybe you should be listening to your own advice before you start passing it around."

Sakura paled while Naruto gave the Uchiha a disapproving glare, though he didn't contradict his friend. The truth was, whatever the deal between Sakura and Ino was, there was no reason that they couldn't be friends. After all, they'd been the best of friends in the future, and while that – he'd learned over and over since arriving in the past – didn't mean that they were destined to be friends this time, it certainly seemed to mean that whatever it was that they were fighting over (and he could guess), they could get past it. Plus, if the future was anything to go by, in another couple of years Ino would be moving on to a more… artistic… ninja.

"Well, anyway, just thought you should know what she might have been told by someone she thought was you," he told her in an effort to give her a chance to get over her embarrassment after Sasuke called her on her hypocrisy. "It seemed like she was kind of happy when you – well, _I_ – said that you two were friends. Maybe things don't have to be so compli…" His voice trailed off as a new memory hit him from a different set of clones. "I have to go to the bathroom," he said as he stood and began walking towards the nearest bushes.

"Right now?" Sakura asked, confused by the strange look that had appeared on his face.

"Yes, right now," he replied in a distracted voice.

"Don't go too far," she said.

"It's going to stink," Naruto replied strangely. Normally those words would have been said like they were a joke, but somehow the emotion had gone out of his voice.

Sakura made a gagging face. "Fine, do what you have to."

"Don't forget the password," Sasuke added.

Naruto barely could spare enough attention to recognize what the Uchiha said or how he responded. All of that seemed so far away at the moment, so unimportant.

Who could think about passwords when a group of his clones had just found Orochimaru?

ooo

Kakashi stood in the growing shadows of the great trees of the Forest of Death, staring straight into the forest as if he could see his team moving within it. He wasn't completely sure why he was there – he had no intention of stopping the test – but after he'd walked away from his conversation with Ibiki, he'd very gradually wandered to the training area as if drawn to it somehow. In all honesty, he hadn't even been paying attention to where his feet were taking him, his mind was too busy putting together the pieces of the puzzle that was Uzumaki Naruto.

As he woke from his thoughts, he felt a presence behind him and turned to find one of the chuunin guards who were patrolling the area to ensure that no one entered or left without permission walking towards briskly towards him.

The man came to a halt when he got a good look at Kakashi's face and then bowed. "Sorry, Kakashi-san, I didn't know it was you."

Kakashi shrugged and turned back to the forest. "How long have they been in there?"

The chuunin glanced up at the sun and said, "Nearly five hours."

"Any word on a team passing yet?"

"None, though I haven't really checked. I think there's only been one team in the history of the Konoha Exam that's ever made it in less than six hours. The record is something like…"

"Three hours, fifty-seven minutes, forty-two seconds," Kakashi said with a slightly raised eyebrow and a small smile beneath his mask. "We would have been faster, but one of my teammates was rather clumsy and had an unfortunate brush with some Konoha Jumping Leeches."

The chuunin's eyes widened. "That was _your_ team?"

"Yes, though something tells me my record has already been broken. Would you mind going and checking for me?"

"Of course," the chuunin said with a respectful bow and then hurried off.

Technically, Kakashi knew, the guard should not have allowed him to remain unwatched while the Exam was going. Chuunin Exams were not only a big deal for the genin taking them, but also for their jounin. It was considered something of a sign of great teaching and leadership ability if a member of your team passed on their first try. There had been hundreds of instances in the past where an ambitious jounin helped his team cheat in order to make himself look better… it was practically a Chuunin Exam tradition.

Kakashi had no intentions of cheating, however. He knew his team would make it through this. In fact, he wouldn't be surprised if they'd reached the tower already.

It all depended on Naruto. Would he be so arrogant as to show off in this test like he had in the first?

The blank test and Ibiki's comment had been the turning point in Kakashi's attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery that was Naruto. There were still portions that he didn't understand, but he was relatively certain of at least one important item in the whole mess. Had it not been for the way Ibiki said it, nearly quoting something Kakashi hadn't remembered saying or thinking until that moment, he probably would have missed the clue's importance and been stuck in the dark for a while longer… assuming he was right. Nothing else seemed to match all of the evidence, but his conclusion was something that he considered to be borderline insanity.

Still, an insane conclusion that sorts through the heart of confusion and clears up a great many problems couldn't possibly be _that_ crazy, could it? His conclusion made sense of far too many things to be entirely off base. Naruto had partly given himself away during the bell test – though that could be explained away by the fact that the bell test wasn't necessarily unique to Kakashi and he had given it to other genin hopefuls. He'd given a little bit more away during the training sessions when he didn't pay attention but still knew all the forms regardless of how different they were from both Academy training and the sort of advanced techniques he might have observed older ninja using. His incredible luck when fighting Fudo and Kamui – fights in which he'd sustained only minor injuries with the exception of being stabbed in the chest though even that was healed – advanced Kakashi's theory still farther as it seemed impossible for any genin to handle those two the way Naruto had. And, finally, he'd really slipped up during the first test of the Exam – no matter how dumb Naruto occasionally was or pretended to be, he would have known to put his name on his test.

Naruto was a good ninja, his stupidity was often blatantly just to keep up appearances, and he was pretty lucky at times, but not _this_ time. No, he wasn't getting lucky, he _knew_.

However he was doing it, whether by his own abilities or through someone else's, Uzumaki Naruto could see into the future.

o

o

A/N: Sorry this is a bit later than normal. I was shooting to update about 6 hours ago, but got distracted by that thing called real life and it nearly slipped my mind.

Anyway, you have no idea how hard this chapter was to write. I don't know what it was – writers block, maybe? Didn't feel like it, but there was obviously some problem – but I've been working on this one for over a month with little to no headway. Part of it, no doubt, is due to having to make changes in earlier chapters and spending a lot of time proofreading/editing those, but as we got closer and closer to this one, I really began to worry that I was actually stuck here. Thankfully, I finally hit upon the idea of having the Sand Trio and Team Ten meet up and that seemed to smooth things out for me. Really, I just didn't want all of the fighting that it going to take place in the next chapter to show up here already.

Naruto's comments about Gaara's tanuki traits probably not extending below the waist came from the original version of his meeting with the Sand Trio back before the Exam started. I don't think he came off quite as cool here as he did in that first meeting, but _cool_ wasn't really the objective this time around.

Well, hopefully you enjoyed this chapter, though it was a bit of a struggle to write so I'm not too sure about it. Frankly, I'm just glad it's over with. Sorry about the cliffhanger. Please review.

Since I still haven't put up that original Gaara scene the way I considered doing, I'll just add it to the bottom after the Jutsu list. If nothing else, you'll be able to see the difference between the two Gaara intros now, right? It's still a bit rough and I haven't really tried combing through it looking for spelling errors since I decided fairly early on in the editing process that it needed to go. Hopefully it will be entertaining, if nothing else.

Kagemane no Jutsu – "Shadow Imitation Technique." A Nara family ability. The users shadow connects with his targets and after that whatever the user does, the target does as well. If, however, someone strikes the target, the user has to move the way the target does.

Kageshibari no Jutsu – "Shadow Binding Technique." This is apparently the old way of referring to Kagemane no Jutsu (as Shikamaru notes during the Sound/Sand invasion arc, chapter 119). It could be argued that the Sound-nin's mistake was due to old info coming from Orochimaru, but I'm going to assume that due to the lack of wars between the great nations during the past however many years, information like a name change is slow to circulate and Temari's mistake isn't illogical. Anyway, it was just there for the joke, don't think about it too hard.

Shintenshin no Jutsu – "Mind Body Switch Technique." A Yamanaka clan skill. The user enters the mind of the target and completely controls them. If you miss, however, you're screwed.

Baika no Jutsu – "Multi-Size Technique." A jutsu that expands the user's stomach so that he looks something like a ball with a head, arms, and legs, it is generally a precursor to Chouji's "Human Bullet/Meat Tank."

Nikudan Sensha – "Human Meat Tank" or "Human Bullet Tank" depending on what translation you use. I think 'meat' might be the more literal translation, but that's just a guess. This is where Chouji rolls up into a ball and runs people over. I happen to think it's one of the funnier attacks in Naruto… though it would be intimidating as hell to see a bunch of Akimichi rolling across the battlefield crushing everything in their path.

Sabaku Sousou – "Desert Funeral." Gaara's finishing move. An enemy trapped in sand is crushed by said sand… pretty gross, but apparently a quick, nearly painless, way to go (if Gaara is to be believed). Of course, he makes up for this by taking his sweet time encasing his enemies in the sand and letting them realize that their lives are about to come to a spectacular and gory end.

Tanuki – Japanese word for a Raccon Dog, a species indigenous to East Asia. The One-Tailed Shukaku is one of these, which is why Gaara's eyes have the dark circles around them. In Japanese folklore, Tanuki are often depicted as having large genitals, hence Naruto's little joke.

Naruto Meets Gaara version 1.0

As they walked towards the training grounds, with Naruto comically leaning against a wooden fence as he dragged his feet along the sidewalk, Kakashi suddenly looked up. Sakura was busy talking to Sasuke, who was _almost_ keeping up his side of the conversation today, so the two of them missed it, but Naruto's eyes caught the movement of the jounin's head and looked up just in time to see a messenger hawk fly overhead, dropping a single feather as it passed them.

_'A meeting?'_ Naruto wondered. That _was_ what the feather drop was supposed to mean, or at least it was what it meant in the future when he'd paid attention to such things. They'd just left the Third's office, what could possibly have happened in the last ten minutes that required Kakashi to head to a meeting?

It only took a second for him to realize the most likely answer to that question.

_'Finally!'_ he cheered inside.

"Since you all are so tired," Kakashi said coming to a stop, "why don't you take the rest of the day off? I just remembered that there was something else I needed to do anyway."

Sakura gave Kakashi a funny look and shook her head. "You just want to spend more time reading you book."

Naruto stuffed a hand in his mouth to keep from laughing.

Kakashi didn't bother giving her an answer. He just turned and wandered off in the general direction of the Hokage Tower. When he was gone, the question of what they should do next arose. Since they _had_ been working hard and hadn't really had much to eat yet that day, Naruto suggested they go out for ramen, but was vetoed in a _close_ 2-1 decision after a controversial ruling that the twenty hands raised for ramen didn't count if they were all still technically Naruto's hands.

"I'm just going to go home," Sasuke said with a shrug as Naruto and Sakura continued to argue over whether or not shadow clones were allowed to vote.

"You aren't going to go train?" Sakura asked, quickly turning away from Naruto.

"Maybe later."

Sakura bit her lip and pressed the toe of her right foot against the concrete. "Can I join you?" she asked hopefully.

Sasuke shrugged. "Training grounds are open to anyone who wants to use them."

"That means: 'yes, please come, I'll be lonely without you,'" Naruto supplied with a grin and an exaggerated wink at Sasuke.

"Idiot," Sasuke muttered as he gave the blond a reproachful glare, but didn't contradict him. He turned, put his hands in his pockets and walked away without another word to either of his teammates.

Sakura tried to smack Naruto on the back of the head, but the blond quickly dodged out of the way and stuck his tongue out at her playfully. "Naruto, you're being annoying," she growled at him.

"Ah, come on, Sakura-chan," Naruto laughed as bounced on his toes, his energy having miraculously returned after their long, tiring mission, "why would you want to go train with boring, broody Sasuke," he made a face that was supposed to look bored, but mostly just looked silly, "when you could go have ramen with someone as cool as me?"

"Because we've gone out for ramen four times in the last week and I'm sick of it," she informed him. "And Sasuke-kun isn't boring or broody."

Naruto clasped his hands in front of his chest and batted his eyes as he said in a high pitched voice that was supposed to sound like hers, "He's handsome and dreamy… the perfect ma—oops!"

Sakura took a swing at him, but he ducked under it and then took a quick step back to avoid her follow up strike. Unfortunately, doing so caused him to trip over a large, square rock with two holes cut out of the front of it. Naruto landed on his butt and stared at the strange object for a second, then stood up and took a couple of steps away from it. When he turned around, the "rock" had inched closer to him. He glanced at Sakura and rolled his eyes, earning a smile and a small giggle from her.

Getting down on all fours, Naruto peered into the holes on the "rock" and shook his head. "What sort of rock is square with two holes cut out of the front of it?" he asked, giving it a tap to let its occupants know that the jig was up.

"Just what I'd expect from the man I view as my rival!" Konohamaru said as he and his two friends, Moegi and Udon climbed out from under the cardboard "rock" that they had probably spent hours building. The three had been affectionately dubbed the "Konohamaru Corps." by the older generation and the name would stick with them into adulthood.

Naruto hadn't seen much of the Hokage's grandson since arriving in the past, though he'd run into him a few times here and there and had even played ninja with the three children once or twice when they asked him to. It was funny to see three people that he'd last seen when they were in their early twenties now returned to being eight year olds throwing toy kunai and shuriken. Moegi would grow to be quite beautiful, but now she was just a little girl with rosy cheeks, two strange lumps of hair rising out of her head like giant orange horns, and the goggles that all three wore so they would look like Naruto had when he was in the Academy. Udon was… Actually, Udon – with the exception of having a runnier nose – looked just like he would in the future: big glasses, brown hair in a bowl cut, and perpetual frown. The one whose reversion was the most shocking was Konohamaru. Naturally he didn't sport the beard that he'd grown as soon as he was able to in honor of his fallen uncle, nor was he as tall and muscular as he would be in the not-so-distant future. In fact, the only thing that parts of his appearance that would remain with him into adulthood were his spiky brown hair and long blue scarf that he always wore.

"Hey guys," Naruto said as he put his hands behind his head. "What are you three up to?"

"We want you to play ninja with us," Konohamaru said with a big encouraging grin that probably got him whatever he wanted from the older women in the village who doted on him because of his grandfather.

Naruto frowned. "Aren't you supposed to be in class right now?"

Konohamaru scowled while Moegi and Udon glanced at him nervously. "You're so cold lately, bro!"

"I'm a real ninja, now," Naruto explained slowly, carefully annunciating all of his words, causing him to sound like an adult speaking down to a small child. "I don't always have time to play with little kids…"

Konohamaru thrust an irritated finger into Naruto's face and yelled, "You promised you'd play with us!"

Naruto swatted the finger away and suppressed a smile. "I don't remember doing that…"

Behind Konohamaru, Moegi turned to Udon and whispered, "He's really cold today."

Sakura watched the whole exchange in mild amusement. Had she not known that Naruto was actually a half-way decent ninja, she would have wondered what sort of ninja _played_ ninja. As Naruto began waving his hands placatingly, trying to get the little boy to stop yelling at him, Sakura had to question why he had promised to play with them – as he clearly had. These kids were what? Seven? Eight? They weren't anywhere close to graduating from the Academy, in fact, they probably weren't advanced enough to even be taught any jutsu other than Henge no Jutsu and maybe Bunshin no Jutsu.

"Naruto," she asked at last, "why did you promise to play ninja with them? Aren't you _already_ a ninja?"

Naruto, who was now leaning down so he and Konohamaru's faces were close enough that they could butt foreheads and yell loudly at one another, looked over at her dumbly, the three children followed his lead. For a moment, no one said anything and then Naruto scratched his head and stood up straighter, chuckling embarrassedly.

Moegi scooted over until Konohamaru was between her and the taller, more mature, Sakura who was giving them all a strange look. "Who's she?" she asked the brown haired boy.

Konohamaru frowned thoughtfully and then brightened. "Hey, not bad, bro!" he said as he patted Naruto on the back. "Not bad at all!"

Naruto looked down at him and raised an eyebrow. "Huh?"

Konohamaru nudged him with his elbow and whispered loudly. "She's your…" he stuck out his pinky, the sign for girlfriend, and grinned knowingly, "this."

Sakura's eyes widened in alarm as Naruto laughed. The last thing she needed was for everyone to think _that_ about her and Naruto! They were friends, yes, and she'd decided not to let people talk bad about him in her presence, but that certainly didn't mean that he'd taken Sasuke's spot in her heart. If these little brats went around blabbing their mouths about this…

"Ah, well, not exactly," Naruto told Konohamaru. "I mean, not that she probably wouldn't like it, but she's not really my…" He heard her growl and felt the mild killer intent rolling off of her just before her fist connected with his head and instantly ducked, her fist passed through his hair, but thankfully nothing else. "Ah, Sakura-chan," he said as he sidestepped a kick that crushed Konohamaru's box-rock disguise, "I was only joking around."

Sakura took another swing at him, but once again he avoided it with ease while noting that training with Sasuke had really helped increase her speed and form. This was the first time she'd actually tried to hurt him in quite a while, but he supposed it was inevitable that eventually he'd do something to set her off – even when they were good friends in the future, she hadn't held back when she felt he needed a good smacking around to straighten him out. She would calm down eventually if she couldn't hit him, he hoped. If not then he'd just have to give her a free shot and hope he survived.

"Hey! You trashed our disguise you stupid, ug—"

Konohamaru's complaint met a swift end as Sakura's fist came down on top of his head. With him on the ground, she turned her glare on the other two children, challenging them to make a sound – neither was willing to risk her wrath. She turned back to Naruto, but couldn't summon up the energy to go after him again. It _had_ sounded like he was only joking, after all, and it was annoying that he was so much faster than her.

She frowned. Once upon a time, Naruto had been far too dimwitted and clumsy to dodge when he said something that demanded a swift physical retaliation, but now he danced around her with ease. When had that started? It didn't really matter, she supposed. She'd hit something; that was enough to calm her temper. Hands still clenched in tight fists she stomped away from the scene, hoping that Sasuke would be up for some sparring when she met him at the training grounds later.

Konohamaru's eyes seemed to be having trouble focusing as he sat up with the help of Moegi and Udon and gingerly touched a large lump that was forming on his head. He turned and glanced at Sakura and stuck out his tongue at her retreating back as he scowled and grumbled under his breath.

Naruto calmly walked over and smiled down at the little boy, "Eh, don't worry about it Konohamaru. It's okay to get beaten up by a girl as strong as Sakura-chan."

Konohamaru shook his head and stood up, casting another angry glare at the kunoichi. "Damn it... Stupid, huge, ugly forehead... Are you sure that's a girl, bro? More like a—"

He never got to finish the comparison – which was probably for the best – because Sakura's ears had picked up the word "forehead" and she was once again charging after the two boys. Naruto and Konohamaru wisely turned and fled in the opposite direction with Udon and Moegi, who wanted no part of the impending beating, trailing just behind them.

"Come on Sakura-chan!" Naruto called back over his shoulder. "He's just a kid! He didn't know how sensitive you are about your forehead... and that ugly-thing was probably just a joke!"

Sakura's answer was another growl of fury as her speed increased. Naruto chuckled as he brought his fingers together when they rounded a corner and were momentarily out of sight. They were going to need a distraction if Sakura didn't calm down before she caught them and it was always nice to have backup in case things got a little out of hand.

The chase might have lasted for some time had Konohamaru, who had pulled ahead of Naruto and the others and was looking back over his shoulder to see how close Sakura was getting to them, not run into two ninja and fallen down. Naruto, Moegi, and Udon all managed to come to a halt before adding to the pile up and Sakura also stopped as she reached the group.

"Damn it!" the kunoichi Konohamaru had run into growled as she glared down at him. She was fairly tall, obviously older than Naruto and Sakura, and had her blond hair pulled back into four short, puffy, ponytails. Her dress was white with rolled sleeves that stopped just below her elbows and extended to mid-thigh to allow maximum movement in combat while a mesh undersuit would allow her to keep her modesty even while performing acrobatics in the midst of a fight. The hitai-ate tied around her neck clearly marked her as a ninja from Sunagakure and the red sash around her waist helped keep not only her dress in place, but also kept the long, black, metal object strapped to her back from moving too much.

She reached down and grabbed Konohamaru by the hair and dragged him back to his feet, bending over so she could look him right in the eye. "Well, you little prick? Don't you have something to say for yourself?"

"Let go of me!" Konohamaru yelled as he tried to pull free, her hands tightened in his hair and his struggles stopped.

"What was _not_ what I wanted to hear you," she informed him sternly.

"Let him go," Naruto told her, his voice slipping into the no-nonsense commanding tone that Sakura had only heard him use a couple of times when he really felt like he had to take control of a situation.

The blonde looked up at the group as if noticing them for the first time and sighed. "Whatever," she muttered under her breath as relaxed her grip.

"You aren't going to let them boss you around, are you Temari?" her companion asked with a nasty chuckle. He was tall and dressed in dark clothing with an oddly shaped object strapped to his back. His painted face twisted in a strange mixture of contempt and amusement. "Something like that might make our _friends_ here think you're actually a nice person."

Temari's teal colored eyes narrowed as she glared at the other ninja. "Shut up, Kankuro, no one asked you."

Kankuro sauntered forward and grabbed Konohamaru by the shirt, lifting him off the ground with ease. "It's okay. This little shit agrees with me, don't you? You think she's being too nice and that you should beg my sister for forgiveness, don't you?" He gave the boy a little shake as he asked the last question.

A part of Naruto, albeit a small part, actually wanted to smile at the scene. He hadn't seen Kankuro or Temari in years, not since Suna was overrun by a combined force of Sound and Rock-nin and in a certain sense, he was happy to see them. At the same time, it was hard to see his one time friends acting this way, just as it had been hard seeing Sakura and Sasuke when he first saw them after waking up in the past. Worst of all, he knew that at the moment his two friends were conspiring to destroy Konoha. They were his enemies – technically – and he couldn't let himself forget that just because of who they would _eventually_ become.

"I'm sorry, it's my fault," Sakura said sheepishly as she clasped her hands nervously in front of her, "I was messing around an—"

"Put him down," Naruto cut her off. "He's just a little kid, it couldn't have hurt that much... unless Sand-nin, like your sister, are really that much weaker than Leaf-nin"

Kankuro scowled down at Naruto and lifted Konohamaru a little higher, drawing another cry from the boy. "If you want him so bad, come and g—"

Before he could finish what he was going to say, a second Naruto hopped over a nearby fence, snatched Konohamaru out of Kankuro's hand and threw him to the first Naruto before vanishing in a puff of smoke. Naruto caught Konohamaru and set him down gently before looking up at the two Sand-nin and giving them a broad smile. It wasn't quite what he'd planed to do with the clone, but sheer luck had left him looking kind of cool and he wasn't going to complain about it.

Kankuro's eyes widened narrowed in annoyance at having his game ruined and Temari – who had irritated the whole conflict, or at least that her brother had taken things into his own hands – suddenly seemed very interested.

"Get out of here and leave us alone, we aren't supposed to fight before the Exam. Besides," Naruto's eyes flickered towards a nearby tree, "I'm going to get scolded by my friend if I have to beat you up."

Sasuke – who was sitting calmly in the branches of the large elm playing with a stone – looked up in surprise at Naruto's words. He'd decided against going home and was coming back to see if Sakura or Naruto would like to go train with him (probably after eating, if Naruto had anything to say about it). When he saw the commotion, he'd silently slipped into the tree, waiting to see if his friends would need any help. He'd been extremely careful not to let his presence be known, but Naruto had spotted him anyway somehow… or maybe the clone had noticed him when hoping over the fence and passed the memory onto Naruto when he was released.

Kankuro didn't bother looking up at the Uchiha, choosing instead to keep his focus on the enemy in front of him. "I hate showoffs like you," he growled as the bundle on his back slipped to the ground with a thud. It looked for all the world like a large white cocoon with a shock of brown hair sticking out of the top of it. Naruto had seen it or other puppets like it and knew how dangerous they could be, especially in the hands of a master like Kankuro. If this descended into a fight, he wasn't sure he could get out it without proving himself to be better than he wanted anyone knowing he was. Thankfully things probably wouldn't get that out of hand.

"You're not going to use Karusa, are you?" Temari asked in disbelief as she stepped forward and grabbed the arm of her younger brother. "Come on, it wasn't _that_ big of a deal."

"Shut up," Kankuro growled as he pulled away from her, "this little prick needs to be taught a lesson!"

"A puppet, huh? Sca-ry!" Naruto said as he made a mockingly spooky face and wiggled his fingers towards the Sand-nin. If Kankuro was surprised that Naruto knew what he was carrying, he didn't show it. Naruto chuckled and reached down to pick a small stone off the ground. "I tell you what," he said with a smile, "you use your little puppet and your sister there can use the fan on her back… and I'll end the fight with this one little stone… I won't even need Showoff up there's help." He glanced towards Sasuke and nodded to let his friend know that he had everything covered. Sasuke nodded to show that he'd gotten he message, but he didn't look pleased.

For a moment, Kankuro looked like he wasn't sure if he should laugh or get angry at such an absurd challenge, but he quickly decided on angry and growled, "Bastard, I should kill you for underestimating me like that."

Temari shook her head in disbelief and rolled her eyes at Naruto while Konohamaru pulled on his friend's orange sleeve and whispered, "Eh, Naruto, do you think that's really a good idea?"

"Trust me," Naruto replied with a wink, "I'm twice as amazing as you think I am!"

Konohamaru frowned. "Um, bro, that's still not all that gr – ouch!"

Naruto's fist came down on the boy's head before he could finish what he was going to say; then he turned to Kankuro and said, "You should know you're going up against a future Hokage, feel free to back down if you don't think you can handle it."

Kankuro snorted as the cloth wrapped around his puppet suddenly fell away. Sakura and Moegi gasped at the sight of the puppet, while Konohamaru quickly scrambled behind Naruto so that only the top of his head could be seen as he peeked around Naruto's back. Naruto couldn't blame them, Karusa was ugly and dangerous looking (and they couldn't even see the really scary parts). With three eyes, dirty brown hair, four arms, with a rather ratty looking cloak thrown over him, and the typical sectioning around a puppets joints and mouth that Naruto had always found creepy, Karusa was an ugly puppet from top to bottom.

"Alright, but don't say I didn't warn you!" Naruto's arm rose, bringing the rock back to prepare to throw it while Kankuro's fingers curled and a tiny shimmer could be seen connecting them to Karusa. Suddenly, Naruto spun on his heel and threw the rock as hard as he could at the tree that Sasuke was sitting in.

Sasuke turned just in time to see a small wave of sand interrupt the projectile's path towards a red headed boy with a large calabash gourd strapped to his back hanging upside down from the limb behind him.

Naruto grinned as the sand slipped back into the gourd. Gaara looked just as surly as ever, perhaps even more so after having a rock thrown at his head. "Tell your friends to stop before I'm forced to hurt them," he told his future friend.

Gaara stared down at the blond through the dark rimmed eyes that Naruto had often thought made him look like the tanuki demon sealed within him. Those eyes often seemed to make him look angry and dangerous, even when he was in a good mood, which was probably a pretty rare thing up until this point in his life. "Kankuro, stop it," the jinchuriki commanded. "You're an embarrassment to our village."

Kankuro's eyes widened at the sight of Gaara and Temari stepped back as she swallowed hard. "Ga… Gaara," Kankuro stuttered, "uh, listen, they started it…"

"Shut up or I'll kill you," Gaara told him calmly. There was no malice in his voice, just a promise.

"He's been there the whole time," Naruto muttered, "It's not like you were going to fool him."

Kankuro had been shaking at the sound of his sibling's voice, but Naruto's words were enough to wake him from his terror. "No one asked you, brat," the puppet master retorted out of the side of his mouth. "Besides, I thought you said you were going to beat me and Temari with that one stone. Did you get scared?"

Naruto grinned. "I said that I'd _stop_ the fight with that stone, not beat you," he reminded the puppet user, "I wouldn't need a stone for that. If you like, we can still continue, but your buddy might get grouchy. Are you going to risk it, or are you _scared_?"

"Damn you…" Kankuro's hands curled into fists as Karusa spun back into its wrap and the sand ninja instantly slipped it back onto his back. "Gaara… I'm sorry, you're right…"

"I'm sorry too," Temari quickly added, stepping forward and lowering her head. "I'm _really_ sorry."

Gaara ignored them, his eyes remaining fixed on Naruto. "I apologize for my team."

Naruto shrugged and waved a hand dismissively. "They weren't going to do anything too bad and I'm sure Sasuke would have stepped in if it got out of hand," he glanced over at Sasuke and grinned. "Isn't that right, Showoff?"

Sasuke scowled, but didn't reply, his eyes straying towards Gaara as he wondered about the other boy's ability to hide himself. Very few people had ever gotten the drop on him like that. In fact, Kakashi was the only one who'd been able to do it in recent years. For Gaara to sneak up on him, he'd have to be beyond Chuunin level already.

Gaara turned towards Sasuke, gave a small bow of his head to acknowledge the other boy, and then vanished in a swirl of sand.

A half second later the gourd wearing ninja was standing next to Kankuro and Temari, neither of whom seemed pleased to have him so close after doing something that displeased him, and staring at Naruto. "It seems we arrived a little too early, but we didn't come to play around," he said with a small scowl and a glance at Kankuro.

"I know that…" Kankuro started, but stopped when he caught sight of the murderous glare in his younger brother's eyes.

With a small nod towards Naruto, Gaara turned and started to walk away, "Let's go."

"Hey, wait!" Sakura shouted, stepping forward. "If you're from Suna, you aren't allowed to be in this village. We can't let you leave until we know why you're here."

Temari laughed contemptuously, glad to have something come up that wouldn't – she hoped – irritate Gaara, or at least wouldn't leave him irritated at _her_. "How clueless are you?" she smirked holding up a passport. "We're here for the Chuunin Selection Exam. You'll probably see a lot of ninja from other villages in the next couple of days when they show up for the Exam."

Konohamaru's eyes lit up and Naruto winked at him. "Don't worry, Konohamaru, I'll win the whole thing and show you how it's done!" he whispered loudly.

The Sand ninja seemed less than impressed with the boast, but before any comments were made, Sasuke appeared in front of him. "What's you're name?" he demanded, staring at Gaara.

Temari smiled happily, her cheeks reddened in a blush, "Me?"

"No," Sasuke sighed in annoyance, "the guy with the gourd."

Gaara's dark rimmed eyes seemed to look right through Sasuke for a moment before he said, "Gaara of the Desert, and you are?"

"Uchiha Sasuke."

The two ninja stared at each other for a moment and then Gaara's eyes shifted towards Naruto. "And you?"

Naruto smiled at his fellow jinchuriki and shrugged. "No one of consequence, Showoff here is the main attraction." He reached up and scratched his cheek, calling the other boy's attention to the whisker marks. Then he put a hand on Konohamaru's shoulder and pushed the smaller boy in the opposite direction from the foreign ninja. "By the way, I like your eyes. They remind me of a _tanuki_ for some reason…" Naruto's eyes drifted down Gaara's body and a wicked smile formed on his lips as he turned away, calling over his shoulder, "I doubt the similarities extend below the waist, though. Come on, Konohamaru, Moegi, Udon, let's go play ninja."

Gaara's eyes were noticeably wider than normal as he stared at the other boy's back for a moment. Almost on its own, his right hand rose, reaching out as if to stop the young ninja and then began to close as sand spilled out of the gourd on his back and headed towards the blond.

Sakura opened her mouth to call out a warning to Naruto and the three children, but before she could form the words, Naruto's hand dipped into his kunai pouch and then swung back up over his shoulder, sending the projectile hurtling towards the sand-nin's face. Another wave of sand rose up and intercepted the attack before it could strike Gaara between the eyes, but in that moment, the spell on Gaara was broken and he lowered his hand.

Naruto stopped walking and turned around once more. "Don't be so hasty, you'll get your shot when the time comes." Then he and the Konohamaru Corps. continued on their way down the road.

Gaara watched the blond until he rounded a corner and vanished from sight and even then he didn't stop staring at the spot where Naruto had disappeared as if trying to will him to return. "We're leaving," he announced to his comrades a few seconds later, his voice strangely strained. The three took a few steps down the sidewalk and then leaped onto a nearby rooftop and vanished.

Sakura looked from the spot where the three had vanished and then over her shoulder at the corner Naruto and the Konohamaru Corps had disappeared around. "Do you ever feel like you've just missed something important?" she asked Sasuke.

The Uchiha's jaw flexed as he grunted an affirmative. Why was it that Naruto surprised him so often? On several occasions, like the one he'd just witnessed, it seemed like Naruto was an intelligent ninja who was far more capable than a person his age should be, but then he'd turn around and nearly get himself drowned, would be half-trampled by a cow, or would make some other boneheaded mistake on a mission. It was like there were two Naruto running around and Sasuke wasn't sure which one was the real one… or, for that matter, which one he was friends with.


	25. Chapter 24

A/N: Okay, you're getting this chapter exceptionally early because 1) it's written – only took me a single day to write it too, though I haven't proof read it as much as I normally do – and 2) I've been wanting to give you all this chapter for a long, long time and I can't bring myself to wait. This, unfortunately means that there won't be a chapter on Friday, so you'll have to wait longer for the next one, but you _didn't_ have to wait as long for this one… so that's a fair trade, right? Anyway, enjoy.

Chapter 24

o

Naruto was barely aware of the speed with which he was moving through the forest, leaping from branch to branch as he made his way towards the battle that had always seemed to be just beyond the horizon. Even as he moved ever closer to it, he could scarcely believe that the time had actually arrived for the final confrontation, for the battle that could very well decide the fate of the world. In the next hour or so, he would kill Orochimaru and become a hero who saved millions of lives (even though none of them would know that he'd just saved them), or he would just be another casualty in Orochimaru's war of conquest. On his shoulders literally rested the destiny of nearly every man, woman, and child residing within the walls of Konohagakure… maybe the whole continent… or even the whole world!

He'd heard of single battles swinging the tide of history one way or another. The fight between Orochimaru and Jiraiya when the former left the village and the battle between Madara and the First Hokage at the Valley of the End were two examples just from Konohagakure. They were easy to point out when it was all said and done and the fallout from the battle was plain to see. Probably he'd even been in a few – certainly his losing effort against Sasuke could count as one – but never had he heard of someone being completely aware of just how much was riding on a single fight before it started. It was easy to see why, too. Anyone who had this kind of pressure on them could hardly be expected to accomplish much outside of pissing their pants at the mere thought of the enormity of what they were about to do. He knew there was a part of him (a very small part, of course) that wanted to take a leak and then go find a place to hide and wait for it all to be over with.

One thing was for sure, this time travel stuff was definitely not meant to be in the hands of mortal men.

However, as much as he might be scared of facing Orochimaru with the knowledge that if he couldn't beat him the whole world would suffer the consequences, there was another emotion that was coursing through his veins. This feeling was far stronger than the fear or nervousness that seemed to have settled in his gut. It was strong enough to make the idea of hiding and hoping for the best seem laughable. It was the emotion that could cloud one's judgment and push them to doing great, terrible, and even stupid things: Anger.

Orochimaru had killed his friends. He'd twisted Sasuke and stolen his body. He'd started war after war, manipulating, lying, and betraying anyone and everyone he needed to. He'd destroyed Konoha, killed its citizens, and, in the end, killed Naruto as well. If there was one person in all of history who deserved death, it was him. And if there was one person in all of history who deserved to kill Orochimaru more than Naruto… well, they weren't in these woods right now, so they'd just have to get over it.

Naruto couldn't deny that he was scared, but more than that, he was angry and wanted revenge for all the horrors Orochimaru had unleashed upon good innocent people who wanted nothing more than to live their lives in peace and quiet. In some part of his mind, he was worried that he wouldn't be able to kill Orochimaru, but that feeling was easily pushed to the side by the angry confidence that he was going to rip the Sannin limb from limb for all the crimes he'd committed in the future. When Naruto was done with him, there wouldn't even be a single living cell left to infect another person. He was going to end this nightmare here and now, any part of him that doubted his ability to do so was easily shouted down by the majority that was guaranteeing it.

All too soon, he reached the spot where two of the original three clones that had made the discovery were waiting for him. The images of Sasuke and Sakura smiled at him and then disappeared, passing their memories of the last few minutes of movement in the faux Grass-nin camp on to him. There wasn't too much of use within the memories. Orochimaru and his minions were simply preparing to set up some sort of base camp, though a few traps had been laid out to catch any idiot stupid enough to go stumbling along the obvious paths into the area. Naruto doubted he would have missed any of them, but it was good to know exactly where they were so he wouldn't have to deal with them on his own.

Now that he was there, he needed some sort of a plan. Anger was useful at times, but it didn't do you much good if you just got yourself killed because you didn't think things through before you ran headlong into a fight.

For the next few minutes, Naruto watched silently from his hiding spot within the trees as the three infiltrators went about their business, his eyes scanning the area, taking in details and noting strategic advantages and disadvantages. He would have to play up the dumb genin act; that much was for sure. Orochimaru was smart and powerful, but arrogant and enjoyed toying with his enemies. If he really thought Naruto was an idiot, he might be caught a little off guard when Naruto revealed who he really was. He couldn't do that until the last minute, though. If he revealed what a threat he really was too early, Orochimaru would slither away and his chance would be lost… or Orochimaru would kill him and his chance would _really_ be lost.

Naruto doubted his young body had the power to go toe to toe with the Sannin for very long, so he would have to play things just right or all would be lost.

As quietly as possible, he began creating shadow clones and spreading them out in the spots he wanted them. They moved in twos and threes so that there would be one to release himself and let everyone know when his group was in position. Each knew what his job was and what to look for should Naruto need them to step in earlier or later. As they began forming a ring around what looked like Orochimaru's base camp, the clones cast Meisaigakure no Jutsu on themselves. The camouflage jutsu wouldn't necessarily keep them hidden from someone like Orochimaru for long, but it was better than sneaking through a green forest in orange coats, and it certainly wouldn't hurt. Unless they made some sort of noise – which none of them would – to alert the Sannin, there was no reason to think that Orochimaru would be actively trying to find them and thus their chances of remaining hidden were pretty good for the moment.

Confirmations from the groups of clones began coming in all too quickly, and soon everyone was in position. Naruto created two more clones and had one release instantly so that the small army now surrounding Orochimaru would know that the plan was about to start. The other nodded, brought his hands together and seemed to vanish as well. Naruto pocketed the kunai resting on the tree branch, took a deep breath, and then dropped silently to the ground.

This was it: the start of a beautiful new future or the beginning of another nightmare.

"No pressure," he whispered to himself as he took a deep breath and stepped into view.

ooo

Ino put up with Chouji half-dragging, half-leading her away from the area where Team Ten had almost met their end for about a third of a kilometer before she pulled away from him and turned to look back the direction they'd come. Her pretty blue eyes were glassy with unshed tears as she stared back through the woods, trying to will Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto to appear from the darkness.

"We shouldn't have left them with that monster," she whispered, biting her lip. "We have to go back."

"Ino, they're fine," Shikamaru replied. He rubbed his chest where the initial sand attack had hit him and winced at the soreness still present.

"You saw what he did to those other guys…" she shuddered at the memory of the screams and the sound of breaking bones and squishing soft tissue, "…he's going to kill them!"

"Naruto said they could handle it," Chouji reminded her though he didn't look all that comfortable about leaving Team Seven to face Gaara either.

Ino brought a hand up to cover her eyes and then pinched the bridge of her nose. "Did you two not pay any attention during class?" she asked. "Naruto is the biggest idiot I've ever known! Why are we listening to him?"

"Ino," Shikamaru said again, sounding far more weary than he had the first time, "they're fine. They weren't even really there."

"But…"

"Those were just clones. They're fine."

Ino shook her head. "No way. Sakura grabbed me when that Gaara guy tried to go after me again. There's no way that was Bunshin no Jutsu."

"It wasn't Bunshin no Jutsu, it was _Kage_ Bunshin no Jutsu."

Ino's eyes widened and she looked at Shikamaru half-expecting him to be snickering or something at the joke she was sure he was making. "Kage Bunshin is a jounin level ninjutsu," she said.

Shikamaru shrugged. "That's what it was. _Sasuke_ practically came right out and said it."

Ino took one last look back towards the battle grounds they'd fled and then scowled. "What the hell as Asuma sensei been doing if Sakura already knows something like that? He's supposed to be helping us get stronger!"

Shikamaru sighed and looked up at the forest canopy, wishing for an open view of the sky. It was too much trouble to bother trying to correct her, and since she wasn't trying to get them to go back there was no real reason to go through the hassle. Which ever member of Team Seven was using shadow clones – and Shikamaru was almost totally certain he knew – the point was that everyone was safe and his team didn't have to go back and face Gaara again. "Whatever, let's just go find ourselves another scroll so we can get out of here."

ooo

"Naruto's been gone a while," Sakura noted as she and Sasuke leaned against a large tree, their shoulders lightly touching as they scanned the surrounding area for any enemies trying to sneak up on them. It was closing in on ten minutes since their blond teammate had abruptly left, not so long that she wanted to go looking for him, but long enough for her to wonder what was keeping him.

Sasuke grunted softly and Sakura felt his injured shoulder move slightly as he shrugged.

"How's your arm?"

"It's fine."

Sakura bit the inside of her cheek as she glanced around once more. She'd wanted to ask Sasuke about something ever since his injury, but hadn't had the chance and wasn't sure that it was really her place to ask. With the test they'd just taken and the instructions and explanations that they'd had to listen to since then, the issue had slipped to the back of her mind. Thinking about Sasuke's arm and the fight that had caused the injury brought the question up again and this time there was nothing to distract her from it… except for Naruto's ever lengthening bathroom break.

She opened her mouth to ask, but closed it again without making a sound. Maybe it wasn't something Sasuke wanted her to know. Naruto knew, which was annoying, but if Sasuke felt more comfortable talking to Naruto, then that was fine… no, no it wasn't.

"Sasuke? When you got hurt…" she bit her lip, took a deep breath that he probably felt through the movement of her shoulder and then pushed ahead, "What did Naruto mean when he said you couldn't beat your brother like that? I know it's probably personal since you… well, you obviously didn't like Naruto talking about it, but I… I thought your family was all dead. Where's your brother been all this time and why do you… why do you want to fight him?"

Sasuke was quite for a long time, but finally he said, "I didn't tell Naruto anything. I don't know how he knows about that."

"But he was right?"

"Yeah, he's right."

The two of them were quite again and Sakura wished that she'd kept her mouth shut. Sasuke was a private person, after all. She should have known he wouldn't want to talk about this sort of thing. Really, who could blame him? His whole family had been murdered; he'd probably been pestered for years about that sort of thing.

Sakura frowned. Sasuke's whole family had been killed, except for his brother… a brother that he wanted to fight… and Sasuke had said that his ambition in life was to kill someone…

"He's the one, isn't he?" she asked as realization struck. "He's the one who killed your family and…" a memory from the day they'd taken Kakashi's bell test rose to the surface, "…and he left you crying. That's what you meant back during Kakashi-sens—"

Sasuke whirled around, grabbing her roughly by the shoulders and forcing her to face him, completely ignoring the fact that now neither of them were watching for any enemies. His eyes were filled with more anger and rage than she could ever remember seeing in him. Sasuke was normally careful to guard his emotions. There were times where he let more show than he meant, but usually his feelings were kept internal. This was definitely one of the times where things were leaking out that he would normally have kept within… though perhaps he didn't care if he was showing her just how angry he was this time.

"Just leave it alone!" he hissed. "My brother is my problem. I don't know how he found out, but I don't need Naruto or you butting in where you don't belong!"

Sakura nodded dumbly, biting her lip to keep it from trembling. His voice had been so full of venom, so full of hatred. She hadn't meant to go where she wasn't wanted… well, she _had_, but she hadn't meant to upset him this much. Sasuke hadn't gotten this mad at Naruto for knowing, though he had hit Naruto, so perhaps this was his non-violent way of telling her he was displeased. She almost wished he would have hit her rather than staring at her with those eyes.

Sasuke was her friend and teammate, she just wanted to know about him so she could be useful to him in whatever way he needed her to be…

Suddenly, Sakura didn't feel so scared or sorry for treading where Sasuke felt she didn't belong. Whether he liked it or not, she _did_ belong there. She loved Sasuke. She loved him enough to back off and just be his friend. She loved him enough to want to do everything in her power to help him in whatever way she could. She did not, however, love him enough to let him kick her out of his life because he wanted to keep something this big hidden from her and Naruto.

"I belong here," she whispered in a soft but resolute voice. "I'm your friend. You don't have the option of not telling me about these things."

"What?" he demanded, some of the anger leaving his voice as confusion set in.

"I'm your friend. I want to help you. If you have to kill your brother," she reached forward, her fingers finding his shirt and grabbing hold, "that's fine. I just want to help you. I just want to be there for you." Sasuke tried to push back from her, but her grip tightened on his shirt. "Don't ever tell me that something like this is none of my business! Saying that is like telling me that I'm not your friend…" she voice trailed off and she looked up at him. "I am your friend, aren't I?" she whispered.

Sasuke looked down at her, swallowed hard, and then looked away. "Yes," he replied softly, "you are… but it's safer for you to not know some things."

Sakura digested that last piece in silence for a moment and then asked, "Safer for me… or for you?"

Sasuke was quiet for a long moment. "I don't know," he confessed at last.

"Maybe when you figure it out, you'll let me know," she replied with a smile, "and Naruto, too, unless he already knows for some reason."

A small approximation of a smile appeared on Sasuke's lips as he looked back down at her and said, "Yeah." They stood there like that for nearly a full minute before Sasuke added, "Uh, do you think you could let go of me now?"

ooo

Naruto adjusted his path so that when Orochimaru and his minions spotted him he wouldn't be looking right at them. Then as soon as he reached the nearest tree, he turned towards it, unzipped his pants and began peeing. It was actually exceptionally hard to get his bladder to give up its contents with his stomach clenching and his insides doing flip-flops. Turning his back on someone like Orochimaru was about the stupidest thing a person could do, but that was the whole point.

Anything less than idiotic would put the Sannin on guard and Naruto needed him as relaxed as possible.

"Hey!" one of them called out. "What the hell are you doing?"

Naruto whirled around, still peeing, and then quickly spun back to finish and zip himself up. "Shit, s-sorry," he replied in a slightly scared voice that didn't require much acting. When he was finished he turned back to the 'Grass genin' and smiled sheepishly. "Uh, sorry, I-I didn't s-see you there…" he told them as he scratched the back of his head nervously.

All three of the faux Grass-nin had their conical hats pushed back so they were only hanging by the straps around their necks. Orochimaru was wearing a light tan colored long kimono with dark underclothing and a weird purple rope tied around his waist, his long black hair was pushed back over his shoulders. The two henchmen were even stranger looking in Naruto's opinion. The shorter and stockier of the two had a shaved head with very pink tinged skin that made it look like he was sunburned, though one would have thought that the conical hat would have at least kept his head a more natural shade. The other was wearing a weird mask that added to the scarecrow appearance that seemed to jump to mind when looking at his long, thin body anyway. Both were dressed in black kimonos with black under clothing. The sunburned one had a thick white rope wrapped around his shoulders; the scarecrow had a similar rope tied around his waste. Naruto hoped for their sakes that their appearances were made to look like the people they were impersonating and not simply due to personal choice.

The thought briefly occurred to him that he didn't even know for sure that these two were actually disguised Sound-nin. It was possible that they were, in fact, Grass-nin and that only Orochimaru was an imposter. It didn't seem likely that the Sannin would leave variables like that just lying around, but there was no way to be sure.

He hoped they were Sound-nin, because he'd feel a little bad if he killed two innocent men just because they happened to have a snake in their midst… not that feeling being uncertain would stop him from killing them. Their fate was sealed the moment he stepped into the clearing and they were standing next to Orochimaru.

"I-I was just l-looking for a place to go to the b-bathroom," Naruto stuttered as he took a timid step away from them.

"Sorry kid, you picked the _wrong_ bathroom," the scarecrow Grass-nin chuckled. He reached into a backpack on the ground and pulled out a kusari-gama, a chain with a sickle blade at one end and a heavy weight at the other. "If you have your scroll, I suggest you hand it over now."

Naruto let his eyes travel over the group and then said, "I d-don't have it…"

"Then you're going to be our leverage over your teammates," the sunburned genin said with a wicked smile.

Orochimaru looked at his two comrades and grinned. "We only need a body for our purposes, there's no need to leave him alive."

Naruto brought his hands up, making sure they were visibly shaking. "Please, I… I don't want any trouble…"

"Well, trouble's found you, kid, you don't have any say in the matter anymore," the shorter genin told him as he took two kamas out of his own pack and twirled them expertly.

Naruto turned to run away, intentionally appearing to trip over himself slightly as he did. Just as his back was turned to his enemies, a memory hit him from one of the clones surrounding the battle area and he instantly ducked as the weighted end of the kusari-gama passed over his head. Another memory hit and he rolled to the side as three kunai thudded into the ground where he'd been only a split second before.

To his enemies, it must have looked like he had eyes in the back of his head. It had taken months of practice and years of using it in actual battle situations to train his body to react instantly to the thoughts and memories of his clones as they watched him fight, but the results were well worth it. In the future, Neji had even commented on the fact that as long as Naruto was entering a battle he'd already prepared for, his field of vision exceeded that of a Hyuuga to some extent. Naruto wasn't quite sure he was _that_ good – if for no other reason than because his "vision" was being continuously diminished every time he used it – but he also knew that Neji wasn't easily impressed and didn't give compliments he didn't mean… he barely gave compliments _at all_, actually.

He was facing his opponents now, not wanting to give away how easy it was to dodge their obviously half-hearted attacks. If Orochimaru had brought two jounin with him and they all started taking him seriously, he'd be in trouble. His little body just wasn't ready for that sort of a fight and probably wouldn't be until after he'd passed through the majority of puberty.

One of the kamas came in with a low, sweeping arc that nearly separated Naruto from his legs at knee level while the other sickle sliced dangerously close to his neck. Naruto jumped over the first and then threw his body flat to evade the second. He landed flat on his back and rolled backwards as the blade of the kusari-gama struck the ground where he'd landed. As he scrambled back to his feet he threw three kuani in the general direction of Orochimaru, though they probably looked like the scared, desperate throws of an inexperienced child as they didn't even come close to hitting their target; which was just what he wanted them to do. An off balance throw that still was perfectly aimed right between Orochimaru's eyes was not the sort of thing that a scared, stupid genin should be capable of… unless that scared, stupid genin happened to be named Sasuke or Tenten.

The three 'Grass'-nin pressed their advantage, driving Naruto back towards a large tree. He tripped, stumbled, made stupid mistakes and just barely escaped from them with his life a few times. On no less than three occasions he saw an opportunity to kill one or the other of the two henchmen, but never even moved to take it. The moment he killed one of them, Orochimaru would stop playing with him.

As they reached the tree, the second stage of Naruto's plan began. He let himself get too close to the short, kama-wielding ninja and took a small, glancing blow to the shoulder. Not enough to slow him down or inhibit his movements, but enough that it drew blood and made it appear as if his survival thus far had been the result of luck. With the stocky ninja still close by, Naruto grabbed him and fell backwards, kicking out his legs and sending the man tumbling away from the rest of the group. Then Naruto pushed chakra into his legs and leapt high over his other two enemies' heads as he threw a couple of kunai at their feet to keep their attention on him. He made sure to land awkwardly and fell on his butt as a result, trying to keep the right impression of him in their minds despite the last few seconds of semi-competence.

As planned, the two turned to follow his movements, turning their backs on their teammate.

The man probably didn't even know what hit him as two clones seemed to appear out of nowhere, one driving a kunai into his neck, severing his spine, while the other's caught him right between the eyes. He didn't even make a sound as his life came to an end. From there, one of the clones transformed into the stocky ninja, picked up the dead man's kamas and rejoined the battle while the other pulled the body out of sight and returned to his position should he be needed later.

The disguised clone didn't attack Orochimaru or the scarecrow henchman. He simply went after Naruto with just as much enthusiasm as the man he was impersonating had been showing. The only real different was that he was very careful not to hit Naruto in any way – though in truth, he never really got the chance. Naruto, on the other hand, had to make sure that he never made solid contact with the clone, but that was easy enough as well. Now he could shift most of his attention to Orochimaru and his remaining henchman without them realizing that a third of their manpower had been lost.

The odds were slowly shifting in his favor. If he could take out and replace the other henchmen without being noticed, the battle would be over before Orochimaru even realized he'd been duped.

ooo

"Well, Kakashi-san," the chuunin said as he hurried back to where Kakashi was waiting, "you don't need to worry. Your record is still safe."

Kakashi's one visible eyebrow rose considerably. "Really?"

"One team did check in with the second fastest time ever, but they missed your mark by nearly an hour."

The jounin smiled beneath his mask. "Hmm, I guess my team held back a little."

The chuunin frowned. "Your team, sir?"

Kakashi's smile fell and he gave the man a piercing look. "It wasn't Team Seven that completed the test?"

The man rubbed his neck and shuffled his feet awkwardly for a moment before replying. "Uh, no, I'm sorry, it wasn't. The team from Suna finished at just over five hours, but they're the only ones in so far."

Kakashi turned back to the immense trees before him and licked his lips. After a moment of silence he turned to leave. "Thank you for the update. Please, let me know when Team Seven passes the test."

The chuunin nodded and bowed respectfully. "Of course, sir."

As Kakashi strolled away from the training area he allowed a trouble look to pass over his face. Was he wrong about Naruto? Was the kid really just that lucky and smart? He mulled this thought over for a moment and then shook his head. No, he was certain about his theory. It fit most of the evidence and even the things that it didn't explain it could certainly help explain.

It didn't, for example, explain Naruto's taijutsu abilities, but depending on the extent of the ability perhaps it could allow him to find people who _did_ know those skills so he could observe them as they trained. It didn't necessarily explain why he was intentionally screwing up during some of their early missions either, but if he (or whoever was looking into the future for him) saw something that told him having Sasuke save them from failing a couple of time would be a good thing…

The ability to see into the future complicated things considerably, Kakashi suddenly realized. Naruto had been hiding the ability, possibly for years. What if he was doing so because if someone found out it would cause something bad to happen? At the same time, if that was the case, wouldn't he have known that Kakashi would find out and tried to stop him? He hadn't, to Kakashi's knowledge, so perhaps there wouldn't be problems if the truth came to light… unless he could only see _some_ things.

Kakashi shook his head. The whole thing was ridiculous. He still planned on confronting Naruto, in private, about it, but he was determined not to think about it until then. He just wished that 'then' would hurry up and become 'now.'

A thought hit him and he turned on his heel and walked back to the chuunin who was once again patrolling the area. "One more thing," Kakashi said as the man looked up at him in surprise. "Where's Mitarashi Anko right now?"

ooo

Gaara sat silently on the balcony of the tower and stared out over the woods. The faint breeze drifting through the large trees surrounding him ruffled his red hair playfully as he slowly scanned the forest. It was strange being in such a green place. He'd had missions that took him to areas like this before, of course, but the abundance of water and plant life never ceased to impress him. Maybe someday, when he was through with Suna and its inhabitants, he would come to a place like this. Surely here he'd have no problem finding people and animals to help him validate his existence for as long as he could cling to life.

After a while, he grew bored of the trees – impressive though they were – and turned to look at the door behind him. His brother and sister were inside somewhere, keeping their distance. They'd been practically huddling in fear ever since his prey had escaped him in the woods. He was fine with them staying away from him, he even preferred it actually. They were annoying and he often wished he could just kill them and be done with it, but something always held him back. He wasn't sure why he simply didn't _really_ want to kill them (those that he really wished to kill were generally dead within a few minutes), but he knew part of it was because it would cause a lot of trouble and make an already difficult life even tougher. Not that he didn't much care about that, his life was not about relaxation anyway, but it would still be more trouble than it was worth to kill them at this point. Someday… maybe… but not yet. Perhaps when he ran out of other people to kill, then it would be worth it.

For the moment, he had other things on his mind, anyway.

"A _tanuki_." That was what the blond boy had said when they'd fought in the forest. It was bad enough that he'd actually been able to not only escape, but allow those other insects to as well, but on top of that: he _knew_. Whoever he was, the blond knew exactly what Gaara was and what was within him. People had looked at Gaara's eyes before, they'd even used the work 'tanuki' to refer to the strange markings around his eyes, but something about the way the blond said it left Gaara with no doubt what he was referring to.

The question was: who was he?

A Leaf genin, perhaps? Technically, it could have been anyone since he had been a shadow clone the whole time. The originals could have been Leaf chuunin or jounin or even someone from a different village who just wanted to mess with Gaara's head. There as no way to be absolutely certain. Those other three Leaf genin had acted like they knew the blond and his friends, so – while there was no way to be sure – there was a good chance that the three really were from Konohagakure. Not that it really mattered, of course. Whoever the blond was, wherever he and his friends were from, Gaara was going to kill them. He was going to find all three of the ninja who had denied him his kills, and he was going to crush them with his sand, giving their blood to his mother.

The sand swirled around him expectantly, as if responding to his thoughts. He held out a hand and let the grains pass between his fingers like the loving caress of his mother. "Don't worry," he promised, "I'll feed you something good soon."

He turned his blue eyes back to the trees and grinned to himself. A blond haired boy with the strange marks on his cheeks, a dark haired boy in the blue shirt, and a pink haired girl. He wouldn't forget them until he'd used them to validate his existence. The last thing they were ever going to see was his sand swirling in front of their eyes as it constricted and crushed their soft, little bodies and then bathed in their beautiful, red blood.

ooo

Naruto ducked under the two twirling kamas and then tripped and rolled backwards as the sickle and chain of the kusari-gama lashed out at him. The scarecrow instantly shifted the weapon in his hands and swung the weight down at Naruto. The blond rolled to the side as the metal ball slammed into the ground where his head had been and then twisted to the left as a kunai from Orochimaru came so close to hitting him that it actually sliced through the thick, orange material of his jacket. The clone with the kamas was next up for a miss, the two blades passing within centimeters of his neck as he threw himself to the ground and then rolled back to his feet and began moving progressively backwards again.

He was still spending most of his time backing away from his three enemies, dodging kunai from Orochimaru, the attacks of the kusari-gama from the remaining henchman, and the kamas from his own clone. He knew he had to take out the last of Orochimaru's followers soon or the Sannin would get bored with the fight and start using his more advanced ninjutsu. Up until this point, Orochimaru had been holding back so much it was almost painful to watch, but if things got to the point where he became serious, Naruto would be forced to give up the element of surprise when he evaded (if he could) whatever attack was thrown at him.

If he lost that, his chances of surviving – let alone winning – would go down dramatically.

His eyes met those of his clone and he reached up and rubbed his right cheek, the signal that it was time to move in on the other henchman. The clone offered up a lazy swing of the kamas, which Naruto sidestepped with ease, grabbing the clone by his arm and swinging him into the scarecrow as gently as possible without losing the illusion of it being a real attack. The clone knew it was coming and was able to keep from being struck too hard as he and the other man went down in a tangle of limbs.

Orochimaru turned to look at his two followers as they tried to get up only to appear to accidentally keep getting in each other's way as they did.

A _very_ light punch to the chest brought the Sannin's attention back to the Naruto as the blond jumped back, tripped over an exposed root and landed on his butt for what felt like the fiftieth time since starting the fight. He stared wide eyed up at Orochimaru as the faux genin advanced on him with a predatory look in his eyes.

Behind them, two genin dropped down from the branches above, taking the scarecrow out with silent, ruthless efficiency. Once more, one clone took the dead man's appearance and weapon and reentered the fight while the other carried away the body.

Naruto tried not to smile as he clumsily dodged the blade of the kusari-gama. This was it. History was going to change, right now.

He pushed off the ground, performing a slow flip backwards to give himself some space from his enemy. "I'm going to show you what a Leaf shinobi can really do," he promised in the sort of boastful voice that only a child who has no idea how weak he really is could use.

"That's good, because I'm tired of playing with you," Orochimaru replied with a smile as he brought his fingers together and began forming seals.

Naruto charged forward with what seemed like reckless abandon. A few more seconds of playing dumb, then a few more of playing not quite as dumb, and then an instant of suddenly being way more than any genin should and it would all be over.

Orochimaru finished the seals and slammed his hands into the ground.

Suddenly something slithered up Naruto's legs, nearly tripping him. He didn't even bother looking down as he slashed at whatever it was before it had a chance to bite him and then threw his kunai at the Sannin.

Orochimaru had to twist to the side to avoid being hit by the blade and actually glanced over his shoulder as he noted the new level of accuracy Naruto had instantly gained before turning back to the blond genin. There was a look of mild surprised on his face as Naruto bore down upon him, having barely broken stride while dealing with the attack. Orochimaru lifted his hands and slammed them back against the ground with more force. This time Naruto was forced to stop as something snaked its way nearly up to his waist, but it no longer mattered, he'd closed the distance enough for his purposes.

As his tangled feet stumbled and he started to fall he slashed down once more and called out just loud enough to be heard by Orochimaru, "Doton: Shinjuu Zanshu no Jutsu!"

He hit the soft ground and sank through it, leaving the remains of whatever had been wrapped around him above ground.

Orochimaru smiled and waited patiently until he felt the ground beneath him tremble. He leapt easily away as Naruto's hand shot out of the dirt and grass, searching for his ankle. "That sort of technique won't get you very far against me," he called out.

Naruto popped out of the ground holding a good sized rock which he launched at Orochimaru's head. The snake easily sidestepped it, but then cried out in pain as one of the kamas struck him in the side. He looked truly alarmed for one beautiful instant and then had to leap to the side to avoid being killed by the blade of the kusari-gama. He landed awkwardly, clutching his bleeding flank and flicked his hands forward, sending a shower of kuani at the two clones. The scarecrow as far enough away to avoid them, but the sunburned one had been running forward and was cut down instantly.

Orochimaru saw what he'd thought was an ally disappear in a cloud of smoke and his eyes widened as he turned to look at Naruto.

"You're looking the wrong way," Naruto whispered to himself.

The rock that Naruto had thrown when he'd emerged from the ground transformed into another clone. Chakra swirled in his hand, forming a ball of blue energy nearly the size of his head. Orochimaru didn't even see it coming.

The clone slammed the Rasengan into the Sannin's back, sending him flying towards the real Naruto. Naruto's open palm shot up, catching the villain under the chin and lifting him high into the air. Orochimaru's strange, snake-like neck was wiggling like a wet ramen noodle as he flew up to where two more clones were already leaping from their perches in the trees to meet him.

The remaining disguised clone ran to Naruto as the original began to form what looked like another Rasengan. The clone held his hands over the ball as it took shape and began adjusting its nature. Naruto's little body probably couldn't make many of these, but it would only take one.

The two clones in the air hit Orochimaru from either side. One landed a kick to the head as the other's foot caught him in the chest. The two disappeared instantly as two more jumped from the trees. They grabbed hands in midair and spun in a little circle so that when they released each other one of them was sent hurtling towards Orochimaru like a comet. The clone reared back and drove his fist into the Sannin's face, sending him plummeting back to earth.

Orochimaru hit the ground head first and was planted up to his shoulders.

Wind wiped around Naruto as the blue Rasengan become more silvery in color and the four large points that one of his ultimate jutsu derived its name from took shape. He lifted the Rasenshuriken above his head and prepared to deal the final blow. For years he'd wanted to use this technique on Orochimaru, but this was his first and best chance.

"Get up," he growled. "Get up and see what you've got coming. I want to see your face when I hit you with this."

Orochimaru did not move. A small, dark pool was beginning to form around him.

"I said get up," Naruto said again.

Finally the Sanin moved. His body slowly fell back until it was resting on the ground as the dirt around his head gave way slightly… and then he was still once more.

"Get up!" Naruto yelled, as he took a step forward. "Stop playing around, we both know that wasn't nearly enough to kill you."

The only movement this time was the rustling of the Sannin's clothes as the wind from the Rasenshuriken pushed them about.

Naruto took a hesitant step forward, still on guard, but suddenly beginning to feel a little confused. He looked closely at the body. With the exception of the movement of his clothing, Orochimaru was perfectly still.

The blond nodded to one of his clones who walked over and pulled the Sannin's head out of the dirt. Naruto half-expected the snake to have his head and neck already burrowing through the earth trying to escape. Orochimaru's neck sagged bonelessly as his head came free. He wasn't burrowing, he wasn't moving, and his open eyes weren't blinking away the dirt that was clumped to them. The clone looked at Naruto and shook his head as he let the body fall back to the ground.

The Rasenshuriken vanished in Naruto's hand as his arm slowly came down. He approached the body cautiously, still expecting a trap. Half a dozen steps later, Orochimaru was still just lying there. Five more and Naruto was standing over him, waiting for the Sannin to move and attack or summon a snake or do… something, anything.

But he didn't move a muscle and Naruto still couldn't see any movement that would indicate breathing.

He nudged the body with his toe and then leapt back.

The only sign of movement was the scroll that fell out of the body's kimono.

Naruto took a deep breath, approached again, picked up the scroll and pocketed it, and then knelt next to the body as his fingers felt for a pulse.

There was none.

A sick feeling of dread washed over him as he knelt and rolled the body over. It looked even more dead close up than it had from a few meters away. Could it be a substitution jutsu, perhaps, or some other trick? That made more sense than the other possibilities running through his mind at the moment. He grabbed at the skin on the body's face and gave it a quick, firm tug.

It didn't come off the way he'd expected it to.

Naruto dropped the body and backed away slowly, his mind reeling. It couldn't be! It didn't make any sense! This man was Orochimaru or, at least, he was _supposed_ to be Orochimaru. How could it have changed? Orochimaru had grabbed this body back just before the Exam had started, when the Grass-nin and his teammates were traveling to Konoha. Even with the changes in the timeline; that should have stayed the same. Nothing Naruto had done could possibly have affected it. None of the minor – or even major – changes he'd made should have had an affect on something that took place so far away with people he had no contact with. There was no reason for it to be any different.

But it was. It was _very_ different.

His back hit a small tree and he slid down it until he was sitting. Somehow, somewhere, he'd changed something and the key component of his knowledge of the future had been rendered useless. The one thing he'd put all of his faith in, upon which he'd rested all of his hopes, was gone. He no longer had any idea where Orochimaru was or what he looked like…

…and he'd taken his eyes off of Sasuke.

ooo

"Naruto's been gone too long," Sakura said as she gave Sasuke a worried glance. "I don't care how much he ate, there's no way he would be gone this long."

Sasuke's dark eyes shifted to the spot where Naruto had disappeared into the woods when he'd suddenly announced that he had to go to the bathroom. "Yeah."

"Should we go look for him?"

Sasuke frowned. If they left to search for Naruto (who might be anywhere) and missed him, he might come back and go searching for wherever they had gone. They might end up circling each other for hours before finally meeting up again. What was worse, during that time there was no telling who or what they might run into while their team's strength was divided. At the same time, if they didn't go, and Naruto was actually in trouble, he might be really hurt or even killed before it became truly apparent that he wasn't coming back.

There were dangers in either decision, but one of them involved sitting around and hoping his friend was okay, the other allowed him to make sure.

"Let's go. As long as he went straight we should be able to find him. He's loud enough that we'll at least hear him from a ways off anyway."

Sakura picked up her backpack as well as the one Naruto had left behind, and then helped a grumbling Sasuke get his over his injured shoulder. "Thank you," she whispered as they prepared to set off.

"He's my friend too," Sasuke replied. "Plus, I don't think I could put up with his whining if he got hurt and we didn't check up on him."

"Knowing him, he probably just…" Sakura's voice trailed off as the sound of something large moving through the brush behind them reached their ears. "Naruto, you dummy," she called out, "Why are you sneaking around in the bushes?"

Three shapes emerged from the bush and Sasuke grabbed Sakura and pulled her behind him with his one good arm.

The three people in front of them were definitely _not_ Naruto.

o

o

A/N: You have my most humble apologies for doing this to you… though I must confess that those apologies are simply to be polite, because I don't feel the least bit bad about the cliffhanger. It was just too perfect a place to leave it.

So, how was that for a little change? Some of you have made comments over the last couple of chapters that came really close to calling this one (a couple even hit it dead center, though I don't know how serious they were). I was kind of annoyed to have my surprise spotted before I could spring it on you, but hopefully more were totally caught off guard. It was pretty hard writing a fight in a way that didn't give away a character's identity (especially when they are far weaker than the person they are presumed to be), but hopefully you made it close to the end before the truth hit you.

Deep authoritative voice: "And now, I command you all to review!" I'd really like to hear what everyone thought of it because I've been waiting (impatiently) to post this fight and this chapter and this (hopefully) surprise since about chapter 5. This story is on alert for about 800 people, if something like this doesn't get close to half of you reviewing… I don't know what will. By the way, this isn't one of those "if I don't get X number of reviews, I won't update" deals. I can guarantee you that I will never do that, I just like hearing from everyone. Anyway, please review.

Meisaigakure no Jutsu – "Hiding Camouflage Technique" This is the technique used by the Rock-nin in the Kakashi Gaiden that turns him invisible. Other's – such as Kabuto – have also been seen using it or something exactly like it at different points in the story.

Kusari-gama – A combination of a sickle and a long chain with a weight attached to the end of it.

Kama – Basically just a sickle weapon. Usually used in pairs. Looks almost identical to the sharp end of the Kusari-gama


	26. Chapter 25

Chapter 25

o

Naruto was little more than an orange blur as he sped through the treetops back towards the spot where he'd left Sasuke and Sakura. "Stupid, stupid," he chanted to himself as he pushed his small body to faster and faster speeds. How could he have been so dumb? He'd thought he had it planned out perfectly, but he'd missed something. Some minor change had altered the timeline in a way he hadn't predicted and now things were spiraling out of control… just like they had when Team Eight got Tazuna's mission.

Naruto had no idea what had caused this shift. He had no idea how he could have affected something happening so far away. What he did know is that, for the moment, he couldn't care less. The only thing that mattered was getting back to Sasuke and Sakura before he inadvertently caused another disaster to befall the people he cared about.

His fingers came together. "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" Nearly a hundred clones appeared around him and instantly branched out in a wide spread patter to search for Sasuke and Sakura in case they'd moved – of their own free will or… not – from the spot where he'd left them

The green leaves and brown branches seemed to melt together as he reached his body's current top speed. If he pushed himself any faster he'd start drawing on the Kyuubi's chakra and he didn't want to go that far. He was close now and if he had to use Kyuubi he wanted to make sure that it happened at a point where no one would be expecting it.

He'd been getting hit with unpleasant surprises left and right today, it only seemed fair to return the favor… if he could.

ooo

"What do you want?" Sasuke asked as he fixed the three newcomers with a glare. He wasn't scared of them, but these were three people that he knew he could not afford to take likely. In the back of his mind he cursed Naruto for his unfortunately timed and inappropriately long bathroom break. With his injury and the fact that Sakura was the physically weakest member of the team, there was no way they could stand against a team of these three people without Naruto to even the odds.

"You're scroll, of course," Hyuuga Neji replied with a grin. "Taking a scroll from the _great_ Uchiha Sasuke, even if you're injured, would be a worthy challenge, I think." He glanced at Lee who seemed to have found something on the ground off to the left that was far more interesting than the conflict going on in front of him. "Lee doesn't think it fair of us to do this. Of course, it's easy for him to say that, _he_ already got to kick your ass today. Still, I bet a _genius_ like you wouldn't mind another lesson, would you?"

Sasuke's good hand squeezed into a tight fist. "Bring it on."

Neji smirked, his pale eyes seeming to take in everything around him. "You have that blond dumbass on your team, right? Where is he?"

Sakura shook her head. "Knowing him he probably got tangled up in the bushes when he went to the bathroom… or maybe he's sneaking up behind you right now."

Neji tapped his temple. "That isn't possible," he told her confidently. "Now hand over the scroll."

"Take it from me, if you can," Sasuke retorted, shrugging his backpack off of his shoulders and stepping away from Sakura. He slowly eased his injured arm out of the makeshift sling she'd made for him and let out a calming breath as he pushed away the small flash of pain the action produced. "Let's see if you can do anything besides talk."

Neji brought one hand up in front of his face with his middle and index fingers extended. "Byakugan!" The veins around his temples bulged as chakra and blood surged into them with the activation of his kekkei genkai.

Sakura let out a gasp and took a small step back. Neji smiled.

"Uchiha Sasuke, you cannot beat me," he said resolutely. "My eyes can see it in every tremble of your muscles. You've already tasted a humiliating defeat at the hands of Lee and you can tell that I am well beyond his level. You are a false genius. Even now there is doubt in your eyes and fear in your heart. Give up, there's no need for you to get hurt… again."

Sasuke ground his teeth and shifted his feet apart. "I don't like the way you talk to people," he growled. "If you think I'm a false genius, feel free to come over here and try to prove it."

"If you need your destiny spelled out for you, I'll be happy to oblige!"

Neji and Sasuke rushed forward, hands already moving to attack. Sasuke struck first, his right fist shooting up towards Neji's face. The dark haired Hyuuga twisted to the side, avoiding the blow and brought his own arm up, fingers extended, aiming at Sasuke's injured left shoulder. Sasuke's right arm, still extended from the punch changed directions, colliding with Neji's forearm and pushing the strike off target enough that Sasuke could spin away from it. He rotated on his right heel, sweeping his left leg out in an attempt to knock his opponent off guard.

Neji's left leg kicked out, blocking Sasuke's sweep and leaving the Uchiha with his back still mostly turned to his opponent. The Hyuuga boy smiled as his fingers shot towards Sasuke back. The fight was going to end before it even really got started.

Before he could be hit, Sasuke bent forward, planting his right hand on the ground and driving his feet up at Neji's face. Neji arched his back as Sasuke's heel passed with in centimeters of his nose and then was knocked backwards as the Uchiha's other foot connected with his chest.

Sasuke pushed off the ground, flipping once in the air and landed in the ready position. A suddenly confident smile spread across his face. "What was that you were saying about me being a false genius?"

Neji didn't bother to respond. He attacked again, moving even faster this time. Sasuke ducked, twisted to the side, and then took a glancing blow to the stomach.

Even though there wasn't much pressure behind the lone landed punch, pain radiated out from the spot, nearly doubling him over. He'd never felt anything like it; it was like Neji had reached into his stomach, grabbed hold of his intestines, and gave them a sharp twist. Neji's hand came at him again, once more aiming at his injured shoulder. Sasuke ignored the loud complaints of his body as he twisted away again, at the same time moving forward so that he ended up much closer to his opponent, and grabbed hold of Neji at the elbow. The older boy's other hand pressed into Sasuke's bicep and he felt his grip instantly weaken, but he refused to allow the weakness to stop him. Using every ounce of strength he could muster, he threw Neji over his shoulder and slammed him into the ground.

For a brief instant, Neji allowed the pain and surprise to show in his strange white eyes, but then his face broke into a large grin. "You lose," he whispered.

Sasuke looked down and saw that Neji's hand was resting against his hip, while the other had grabbed hold of his ankle. He tried to take a step back, but stumbled and went down, his legs not responding the way they were supposed to for some reason.

"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura cried out as she started to run to his aid. Before she'd managed two steps, a kunai struck the heel of her sandal with enough force to actually pin her to the ground for a second. Sakura looked up at the girl in the pink cheongsam who still had her hand extended from the incredibly accurate throw.

The girl smiled at her, pulled another kunai from the pouch on her right thigh with two fingers, and then flipped it up over her shoulder and caught it behind her back with her left hand. With a casual flick of her wrist she threw the second kunai with such accuracy that it struck the sole of Sakura's sandal right in the middle of her foot arch. Sakura couldn't help but look up in wonder at the display of skill. The brown haired girl winked at her as her smile grew larger.

"Tenten-san, I understand the fires of your youth are burning brightly, but please don't show off," Lee sighed with a shake of his head. The happy smile that seemed a constant on his face was still strangely absent.

Tenten rolled her eyes. "You have no room to complain in the showing off department, Lee."

Lee, still looking strangely unhappy, sighed again and turned his eyes back towards the fight between Neji and Sasuke. "This fight is not fair," he whispered.

Neji was now standing a short distance from Sasuke, a haughty expression on his face. "Well, _genius_, are you ready to give me that scroll?"

"If you think you've beaten me, you're wrong," Sasuke replied, though the confidence had gone out of his eyes. He glanced at Sakura, and then at Lee and Tenten and finally back to Neji. "I didn't want to have to do this, but I'm afraid you've left me with no choice. His fingers came together, burning through seals and then came up to his mouth as he took a deep breath.

Neji's pale eyes widened in alarm while his hands and feet automatically shifted as if he were planning to spin away from Sasuke's attack. Despite the immediate danger in front of him as Sasuke prepared to unleash his jutsu, Neji suddenly looked to the side as something drew his attention away from his downed opponent.

At that instant an orange streak leaped from the trees above them and came to a dusty, skidding halt. As the dust cleared, Naruto was standing between the two genin, panting hard and looking around wildly for… something.

"Sasuke, Sakura-chan! Are you two alright?" he asked after it became obvious that whatever he was looking for wasn't here.

Neither felt the need to answer given the current predicament they were clearly in.

Naruto looked at Neji and his eyes narrowed dangerously. "Tell me who you are."

"Ask your loser of a friend," Neji replied with a smirk. "I was just in the middle of teaching him a lesson about fate and true genius."

Naruto nodded and flashed the Hyuuga boy a smile that obviously had a chuckle behind it. "Yeah, you're Neji alright." He looked over his shoulder at Tenten and then over at Sakura who was just finally pulling the two kunai from her shoe. "And she's still Tenten…" His shoulders slumped and he seemed to deflate slightly as he let out a relieved sigh and wiped sweat from his brow. "What the hell is going on?"

"We're taking your scroll," Neji replied. He was growing visibly annoyed with Naruto's total lack of awareness of the situation around him. It was like the blond didn't even care that he'd just stepped into the middle of a fight.

Naruto snorted and waved his hand dismissively. "Go find someone else to play with. We don't have time to mess with you guys right now."

"What did you say?"

The blond shook his head and reached down to help Sasuke to his feet. "You heard me."

Neji's jaw flexed. "I can see you have the Earth scroll in your jacket pocket. Hand it over and we'll be happy to leave you alone to lick your wounds."

With Sasuke unsteadily on his feet once more, Naruto turned and smiled at his future friend who was currently really starting to get on his nerves. "Neji, any other time I'd be happy to deal with you, but today I am _really_ not in the mood. Go find yourself another scroll, get to the tower, and we'll see what happens from there, but if you make me fight you right now… it won't be pretty."  
Neji snorted. "Do you have any idea who I actually am?"

Naruto couldn't help it, he started laughing. More than anything it was a way to relieve some of the stress that was threatening to overwhelm him at the moment, but it was also partly due to the thought of what would happen if he gave Neji an honest answer to that question. It would almost be worth it just to see the Hyuuga genius' face when Naruto said the words that were on the tip of his tongue. Unfortunately, he didn't want to start getting into anything like that. His world was too chaotic at the moment for him to think straight; he needed to get somewhere safe so he could figure out what the hell was going on. Talking to or – more likely, especially if he answered the question – fighting with Neji was probably about the worst thing he could do at the moment since there was no way he had the mental discipline to reign himself in while things were spinning so totally out his of control. The fight would be over in the blink of an eye and no one in the area would have any doubt that Naruto was no fresh out the Academy genin.

Instead, he brought his fingers together. "Taijuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"

The area where they were standing suddenly filled with nearly a thousand clones. They surrounded Lee, Tenten, Sakura, and Neji along the ground standing almost shoulder to shoulder, but still couldn't all fit in such a small area and had so filled the tree branches above them and even stood with their feet glued to the trunks of the trees since all the branches were easily filled.

Naruto smiled at Neji's shocked face as he lifted Sasuke's less injured arm and put it around his shoulder while another clone grabbed hold of Sakura. "I'll see you in the preliminaries," Naruto told Neji before glancing over his shoulder at Lee and giving the bowl cut boy a nod and reassuring wink. "Don't be late."

And then the mass of clones descended upon Team Nine like water spilling over the edge of a cliff. The three genin fought madly against the onslaught, but even though the clones never bothered to attack them, the sheer numbers kept them from being able to even think about giving chase to the fleeing Team Seven.

A few minutes later, the clones suddenly vanished in a massive cloud of smoke, leaving a very confused and worn down Team Nine to wonder how they'd lost such a perfect chance to get their hands on the scroll they needed. The clones also left Hyuuga Neji hungering for the chance to face Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke again.

ooo

Hinata ducked as two senbon passed over her shoulder and struck the tree behind her. As the needles hit, she heard the soft tinkle of the bells attached to the ends of them. Hinata frowned at her opponent; why would she have attached bells to the ends of her weapons? Certainly no one would be dumb enough to fall for the classic trick of following up an attack like this with one where there was only one senbon with a bell attached to it, would they?

"I-I won't fall for that," she told the dark haired girl in front of her. The woman was wearing an outfit with a light and dark grey camouflage pattern and had a thick beige vest over the top of it. Upon her head she wore the hitai-ate of Otogakure.

"You already have," the girl grinned confidently as she pulled another pair of needles from the weapon pouch on her right thigh. As she lifted her hand to throw them, the bells behind Hinata rang again.

Hinata didn't need to turn to see that there was no one behind her. "I'm s-sorry, but that w-wire you are using to ring the bells won't fool me either."

At this, the girl actually blinked in confusion. "How did you know what I was doing?"

"I can still see the bells," Hinata replied softly. "Y-your technique will not work on a Hyuuga."

The smile returned to the woman's face. "Ah, I thought those weird eyes did more than just make you look strange." The bells rang again. "Unfortunately for you, I wasn't trying to get you to turn around."

Hinata's eyes widened as the world seemed to twist under her feet for the briefest of seconds. She took a stumbling step to the side and squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden feeling of vertigo. The sensation only lasted for a second, however, and then she realized what was happening and the world stabilized. When she opened her eyes, the young woman was walking confidently towards her, a dozen identical girls walking with her.

"One down," the girls all said as they reached for Hinata.

Hinata's hand shot up; poking the girl in the shoulder as her other hand attacked the elbow of the opposite arm. She was on her feet instantly, attacking as she rose. In just a few seconds, it was all over.

The girl took a stumbling step backwards and then fell. She looked up in surprise and horror as Hinata stood over her, white eyes alert for any movement to counterattack though that would be nearly impossible after so many Juuken strikes. "How is this possible," she asked. "I had you trapped in my Suzu Senbon no Genkaku. How could you tell where the real me was standing?"

Hinata gave a shy shrug and a small smile. "M-my clan can see through most illusions," she replied. "I'm sorry… but y-your Keirakurei was clearly visible i-in the real you while the... the images from the genjutsu lacked it. You did very well though," she added quickly, not wanting to rub her victory into a beaten opponent's face, "I'm s-sure that if you'd fought someone else, you would have been the victor."

The girl scowled. "Whatever."

Hinata gave a small, apologetic bow and then reached into her kunai holster. "F-forgive me for this," she whispered as she held the blade to the girl's throat. Then she called out in as loud a voice as she could bring herself to muster, "P-please, s-stop fighting. The… the battle is over."

Not too far away, Kiba was facing off with another Sound-nin who was just getting to his feet in the middle of a large pile of soft dirt that Kiba and Akamaru had just tried to plant him in. Beyond them, a swarm of kikaichu bugs was surrounding the final Sound-nin who was already on his knees, trying desperately to fend them off.

The four other genin stopped and looked at Hinata in surprise.

"Kin, what the hell are you doing!" the spiky dark haired Sound-nin fighting Kiba yelled in annoyance. He was wearing some sort of metal or plastic headgear to protect his jaw and temple and had a brown coat with the kanji for 'death' in large red print on it, his pants and scarf had the same camouflage coloring as Kin's.

"Shut up, Zaku!" Kin yelled back, though she kept a careful eye on the blade of Hinata's kunai as she did so.

The man facing Shino staggered to his feet and shook his head. His face was completely covered in bandages, save for the area around his left eye which was currently being used to glare at his two teammates. "Both of you shut up. We're beaten, there's no reason to act like children about it." He reached into his blue-gray kimono with the arm that had the thick metal device he used to manipulate sound waves, pulled out his team's scroll, and tossed it to Shino. "Good luck in the finals," he said as the bandages around his mouth moved in what could have been the formation of a smile. "Now, please, let my teammates and I go. There's no need for us fight any more."

Shino inclined his head ever so slightly and then nodded to Hinata who stepped away from Kin.

"Dosu, we can't just give up like this, can we?" Zaku asked incredulously.

"The rules don't say that you have to be carrying the scroll you were originally given," Shino pointed out. "There's still sufficient time for you to find two more and make it to the tower."

Dosu chuckled. "We'll see what happens. If we do make it, don't expect the rematch to go the same way."

"We… we would be honored to face you again, Dosu-san," Hinata said with a small bow as the three Sound genin helped each other limp away.

"Eh, you're too nice, Hinata-chan!" Kiba laughed as he walked over to her and leaned against her shoulder grinning after the group and then added in a voice loud enough to carry to their retreating opponents, "We totally kicked there asses!" Akamaru barked his agreement from atop Kiba's head.

"Kiba-kun!" Hinata gasped. "T-that isn't nice."

"Hey, they jumped us, remember? Plus, that Zaku guy kind of pissed me off… acting like he was so tough just because he had those weird arms."

"Nevertheless," Shino said as he walked over to them, hands in his pocket, sunglasses still perfectly in place, "mocking a beaten enemy is beneath us. They fought well, even if they did not emerge victoriously."

Kiba rolled his eyes. "Speaking of pissing me off…"

No doubt Shino heard the comment, but what little of his face could be seen never showed even the slightest hint of annoyance at his teammate. "They had the scroll we needed," he informed his team calmly. "It would be advisable for us to make haste to the tower now. The longer we remain in the woods the greater the chances are that we will be ambushed again."

"Yeah, but the longer we stay out here, the more scrolls we can collect," Kiba pointed out. "If we can get our hands on a few more scrolls, we'll cut down on the number of teams that advance to the next round and make it easier for us later."

"We will also run the risk of weakening ourselves," Shino replied calmly, "and we do not yet know what the next test will be. If we hurry, we will have time to rest before the next round which would give us a distinct advantage over any teams that advance."

Hinata played with her fingernails as her two teammates argued. Personally, she agreed with Shino, though not necessarily for the same reasons. She just wanted to get out of the woods before she did something to screw the test up for her team. So far she'd been helpful or at least she _thought_ she'd probably been helpful. Her Byakugan had allowed her to warn her teammates about the Sound genin ambush before it was sprung and she'd defeated her opponent during the fight. Naruto had been telling her that she was really improving during their training times, but he had also been very obviously picking things to work on that he was sure she would be good at from the beginning. He, no doubt, would be telling her that she'd done well now, but he barely ever seemed to find fault with her or get mad when she messed up. He would say that he was proud of her no matter what, but the longer this test went on…

"What do you think we should do, Hinata-chan?" Kiba asked, waking her from her thoughts.

Hinata's eyes widened. "Um… I, um…" She looked down, not sure what to say. If she sided with Kiba, Shino would… well, Shino would probably remain as calm and calculating as ever, but she would be setting herself up for failure by remaining in the forest with her team depending on her. If she sided with Shino, however, Kiba would be visibly upset and she didn't want to do anything that would anger her friend. "Um…"

Suddenly, the image of Naruto poking her in the forehead appeared in her mind. This was exactly the sort of thing that he'd been trying to encourage her to be more confident during. Her friends wouldn't care what she decided – at least not _too_ much – so long as she was being honest. When… _if_… she became the head of the clan, she would have to make decisions that would not always be popular with everyone, but they would have to be made for the good of the Hyuuga. Her vote in this case would not sit well with half of her teammates, regardless of what she said, but she had to make a decision based on what she thought was best for her team.

"Shino-kun is right," she whispered. "We should make it to the tower as quickly as possible and rest for the next test. If we stay out here we might be able to get another couple of scrolls, but we could be injured in the process and forced to drop out. It would be wiser for us to advance now while we are still fresh."

Predictably Kiba groaned and complained for a few minutes about the decision, but in the end he bowed to the will of the majority and only sulked for a little while as they made their way towards the tower. It was hard making a decision that she knew would upset him, but Hinata was surprised at how good it felt to take a stand. Once the words were out of her mouth, without a single stutter no less, she felt like a weight had lifted off of her chest. She'd made the right choice and now her team was going to advance to the next test.

Perhaps she wasn't so useless after all.

ooo

Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura were within a kilometer of the tower when Naruto stopped on a large tree branch and let go of Sasuke who promptly pushed himself away from the blond and glared at him. Behind the two boys, the clone that had been holding Sakura vanished with a puff of smoke, leaving her standing by herself.

"Why did you interfere?" Sasuke demanded. "That was my fight!"

Naruto, out of breath and sweating profusely, dropped to one knee and didn't bother answering. As his breathing gradually returned to normal he wiped the sweat from his brow and looked wearily up at Sasuke. "Sorry, Showoff, it didn't look like things were going your way and we already had both scrolls. Why should we fight them when we have nothing to gain?"

"Where did you get the other scroll?" Sasuke asked, his anger taking a backseat to his curiosity for the moment.

Naruto had already though of an answer for this question since he'd known it would come up eventually. "Some weirdoes jumped me while I was…" he glanced at Sakura and gave a sheepish smile, "well, I got jumped. They weren't very good though, so it's fine."

Sakura knelt next to him and looked at the cut he'd taken to the shoulder. "This doesn't look too bad," she said, "give me just a second and I'll have you patched up."

Naruto shook his head. "Check Sasuke first. The Hyuuga do this weird thing when they fight, it can mess up your insides. I'll be fine as long as we get to the tower soon."

Sakura nodded and moved on to a reluctant Sasuke while Naruto basically crawled over to the trunk of the tree and sat against it and let his head fall back into an awkward but strangely comfortable position. Thoughts of Orochimaru tried to swallow him up once more, but he pushed them aside for the moment. He was too tired to try to think about that now… or at least too tired to _actively_ think about it. It seemed that no matter how hard he tried to think of other things, the questions kept running through his head:

Why were things different? What had he changed? Where was Orochimaru?

He'd used up a fair amount of chakra fighting the Grass genin and even before that he'd been holding together a couple dozen clones and the illusions cast on them, and then after the fight he'd ran all the way back to Sasuke and Sakura at his top speed while almost a hundred clones did the same, and he'd followed it up by using Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu… all of that combined to leave him totally and completely exhausted.

For the moment, anyway. He was sure he just needed a few minutes to get some energy back and catch his breath. Unfortunately, thoughts of his encounter with the Grass genin and the sudden spiraling out of control of his life made it impossible for him to catch his breath. In fact, it made it hard to breathe or even think straight.

Orochimaru wasn't who he was supposed to be! How could that have happened? Naruto knew he had no answers, but he couldn't stop asking the question. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. He couldn't even see anything but the Grass genin's face as he pulled on the man's skin and realized that Orochimaru wasn't hiding underneath.

Team Seven rested for about a half hour as Sasuke's tenketsu slowly reopened, allowing him to move properly once more. Sakura made it a point to check on all of the injuries her two friends had received during their fights and bathroom break. Naruto's shoulder was more of a scratch than anything, though it was deep enough to cause plenty of bleeding. She cleaned the small wound, healed it as best she could, and bandaged the rest. Throughout the whole process, Naruto neither looked at her, nor said a word. He just stared off into the distance as she did what she needed to heal him.

Though he tried to hide it, she could tell that Sasuke's shoulder was starting to ache again, probably from his movements during the fight with Neji. She wrapped it a little tighter and adjusted the sling so that it held his arm at a more comfortable position.

Once everyone was in as good of shape as she could get them at the moment, she and Sasuke stood and hefted their backpacks onto their shoulders. "Are you ready to go, Naruto?" Sakura asked.

Naruto continued to stare unblinking at the next tree over.

"Naruto? Let's go."

He managed to blink this time, but that was the extent of his movement.

"Naruto!" Sakura yelled far louder than was probably advisable given the nature of the test. "Wake up!"

Naruto blinked again and looked up at her in confusion. "What was that, Sakura-chan?"

Had he smiled or given any hint that he'd just been messing with her, she might have kicked him off the branch and refused to heal any injuries he received on the way down, but he looked genuinely confused and his eyes were troubled.

"Are you alright, Naruto?" Sakura asked with a concerned voice.

He gave himself a little shake, pushing the thoughts that were plaguing him to the back of his mind as best he could and forced a smile as he stood up. "Yeah, I'm fine," he said as he swung his backpack onto his shoulders, "just a little tired is all. Let's go pass this test so I can take a nap."

It sounded like a blatant lie to Sakura and she turned to Sasuke to see what he was going to say about it, but found him half-smiling at their blond teammate. "Yeah, let's go," he said.

As the two boys prepared to leap to the next tree, Sakura shook her head and followed. Sometimes, this team really weirded her out.

The rest of the trip to the tower went by quickly and soon the three genin were standing on the smooth stone walkway surrounding the immense wooden structure. The two chuunin standing on either side of a double-door entrance gave Team Seven congratulatory smiles and told them to head inside.

The room directly beyond the doors was a large, open area with an overlooking walkway and a few doors along the walls leading deeper into the tower. On the far wall was a large sign. The three came to a stop before it as Sakura and Sasuke quickly read it.

"Without heaven…" Sakura read aloud, "but… there are words missing."

"Let's open the scrolls," Sasuke suggested. "It can't be a coincidence that the sign talks about 'heaven' and 'earth' and the scrolls are inscribed with the same thing."

Naruto pulled the Heaven scroll from his backpack as Sasuke retrieved his Earth scroll. Without preamble the two peeled back the top level of paper and unrolled them simultaneously.

The summoning jutsu activated immediately and both boys dropped their scrolls and stepped away from the swirling smoke spilling out of them.

"Well, well, I expected you sooner," Kakashi said as he closed his book and looked up at them.

"Sensei?" Sakura asked in surprise.

"Still," Kakashi went on, ignoring her question, "I suppose my team would be the sort to keep me waiting… and only two other teams finished faster than you." His one eye passed over each of them, pausing only briefly on Naruto before moving on. "I'm proud of you," he told them.

Naruto let out a slow breath and waited patiently as Kakashi explained the Chuunin Motto and the purpose of the scrolls in the test. He was certain that when he'd taken the test the first time, Iruka had been the one to greet them… in fact, he was certain that anyone who was summoned by the scroll should have been a chuunin, not a jounin. The test was to admit genin into the chuunin ranks and so their potential peers were supposed to be the ones to congratulate them on passing the second and third portions of the test. They were also – if he remembered right – the ones who were supposed to present the genin with their first chuunin vests should they be deemed worthy of that level.

What could possibly have happened that would result in Kakashi being the one to show up? Where was Iruka? Hell, where was _Orochimaru_?!

Naruto shook his head and concentrated on slowing his breathing once more. It wouldn't do to panic right now. He and his team had made it through the Forest of Death. Sasuke hadn't come into contact with Orochimaru. Two of his three goals for the second test had been accomplished. The big one: 'Kill Orochimaru' was still left unfinished, but other than that he'd had a pretty successful day. He just needed to find some quiet place where he could think and figure out what was going on and everything would be fine.

When Kakashi's speech was over and the few questions Sakura and Sasuke asked were answered, the silver haired jounin dismissed them to go get rested and cleaned up. They still had a few days before the test officially came to an end, so they would just have to remain in the tower until that time. The words were scarcely out of Kakashi's mouth before Naruto was out the door and hurrying to find a quiet, secluded spot to mull things over. In his distracted haste, he didn't hear Kakashi call after him, but even if he had, he might not have stopped.

The room Naruto finally planted himself in was on one of the upper levels of the tower. It looked like it had once served as some sort of office-dormitory hybrid with a desk on one side and four tightly spaced beds on the other. He practically flung himself onto the nearest bed, kicking up a cloud of dust from the scarcely used sheets and blanket, and covered his face with his hands.

'What had happened?' That was the question, as were: 'What had changed?' and 'Why wasn't Orochimaru where he was supposed to be?'

Was it the mining town mission? Could those missing-nin have somehow run into someone later that would have steered Orochimaru towards the Grass-nin he had originally replaced? That seemed incredibly unlikely, at best. For one thing, Kogane wasn't anywhere close to Otogakure, so the chances of them just happening to end up meeting someone who could intentionally or unintentionally cause Orochimaru to change what he was supposed to do were incredibly small. For another, how much of a coincidence would it have been that he would randomly run into a group of people who could have such an important impact on a person they – presumably – didn't know?

No, there was something else he was missing… he just had no idea what it could be.

This sort of thing was happening far too frequently for Naruto's liking. First there was Sasuke's refusal to offer food to Sakura after she was tied to the post during Kakashi's bell test, then Team Eight received the mission to the Wave Country instead of Team Seven, and then just today there was Sasuke's lack of a Sharingan, followed by getting seated next to the person he _thought_ was Orochimaru, and Sakura's attempt to quit during the first test, Orochimaru not being in the right body, Kakashi showing up to greet them instead of Iruka or some other chuunin…

He couldn't perfectly remember everything that had happened to him as a kid, of course, but a great many of the parts he _did_ remember – if only dimly – were changing for reasons he couldn't fathom.

It was like this wasn't his timeline at all, but some sort of alternate reality where some things were just slightly different!

That thought, brought up almost as a joke, gave him pause. Could it be? Everything was so close that he'd just assumed he was in _his_ past, but what if that wasn't the case at all? What if this was just _a _past that happened to be very similar to his own?

That might actually explain some of the weird little changes that he'd run into since waking up in this… whatever it was. He'd long since given up the idea that this was genjutsu, but that didn't mean that he was necessarily exactly right in his assumption of what was going on around him.

The idea also opened up a whole host of uncomfortable questions he'd rather not have to deal with. Was Orochimaru a bad guy in this reality? Did Sasuke even have the ability to unlock his Sharingan? He'd now been beaten twice in a single day by members of Team Nine, was he going to be weaker than the Sasuke Naruto remembered from his original childhood? Was Sasuke even in danger of leaving the village in the first place? Was Kabuto really a spy or did he approach the rookie genin just to be nice to a bunch of little kids the way he said he had? Would Danzo try to overthrow Tsunade? Would Tsunade even make a good Hokage? Would it be possible for her and Jiraiya to be evil while Orochimaru was one of the good guys? The list went on and on, but there were no answers to any of them.

The longer he thought about this new and terrifying possibility, the more his stomach twisted in painful knots. He longed to go and find a bathroom so he could empty his stomach of the remains of his meager breakfast that were currently gurgling within it. Technically, given how long he'd gone without a proper meal and the exertion of using so much chakra during the series of near-disasters in the forest, he knew he should go and eat rather than throw up, but at the moment adding food to the volatile mixture in his gut sounded like one of the worst ideas ever.

A soft knock on the door pulled him away from his confusing thoughts and back into the here and now.

Kakashi stepped through the door, fixed the blond with a piercing gaze, and then stepped inside and closed the door behind him. "Naruto, I think we need to have a talk."

Naruto groaned and sat up. This day just kept getting better and better.

ooo

Sasuke and Sakura sat across from each other in silence as they ate a simple meal at the small table that had been set up in the makeshift dining room. Sasuke had no idea why Sakura was so quiet, but he found himself strangely longing for her to say something so he could stop thinking about the subject that his mind seemed unwilling to let go of.

Why was he so weak?

First that bushy-browed Rock Lee had beaten him handily, almost breaking his arm in the process. Then Lee's teammate, Hyuuga Neji, had also been able to defeat him fairly quickly. To make matters worse, if _Naruto_, of all people, hadn't stepped in both times, those fights could have gone even worse for him.

Sasuke had been forced to accept the fact that Naruto was a pretty good ninja. His progress since they became Team Seven was practically miraculous – making Sasuke wonder if perhaps the teachers at the Academy weren't actually responsible for Naruto's early struggles – and he'd proven on a number of occasions that he was growing more and more skilled as time went on. Sasuke had even accepted that he might occasionally need Naruto's help and that training with Naruto and Sakura was more beneficial (and more fun) than training alone.

What he _couldn't_ accept was Naruto having to step in and save him time and time again.

He was an Uchiha, wasn't he? A genius, if the comments by his teachers and the villagers were anything to go by. So why was he so weak? What was holding him back?

One thing was certain: Itachi would never have been beaten like that, let alone have had it happen twice in one day.

_"If you want to kill me… hate me! Curse me! Live a long and unsightly life. Run away. Run away… and cling to your pitiful life! And some day, when you have the same 'eyes' as me, come before me."_

Sasuke swallowed hard. He actually hadn't thought of those words since… not since the Mining Town mission… not since he had decided that Sakura and Naruto were his friends and began to really enjoy their company. He'd thought about Itachi, about getting stronger and getting revenge, but not those words. Now, as he wallowed in his weakness, they came rushing back to him, as did the rest of that night.

_"It would be worthless to kill someone like you… my foolish brother…"_

Yes, worthless. It would have been worthless to kill someone so weak. Itachi couldn't test himself against someone like Sasuke, someone who was too weak to give him any satisfaction. Someone who didn't have the Sharingan.

Sasuke lifted his eyes from his plate and watched Sakura as she tucked a stray strand of pink hair behind her ear and continued stirring her rice with her chopsticks. Could he kill her to gain the power necessary for his revenge? His stomach tightened at the image of himself wrapped in shadows and standing over her and Naruto as their dark blood slowly spread across the floor… the picture in his mind looked almost exactly the same as the image of his brother standing over their parents _that_ night.

He looked back down at his own food and suddenly felt a little sick. He was an Avenger. He would do anything to kill Itachi and avenge his clan…

Anything…

But maybe not that…

Sakura's foot brushed against his, waking him from his dark thoughts as his head snapped up.

"Are you okay?" she asked with a gentle smile. "You look… sad."

He scowled to hide his discomfort and shrugged. "What's to be sad about?"

Sakura smile grew a little larger and her head bobbed in understanding. "I'm surprised Naruto's not down here," she said, mercifully changing the subject. "He's always so hungry and I don't think he's eaten anything since breakfast."

Sasuke wasn't sure if Sakura changed the subject because she'd seen that he didn't want to talk about what was upsetting him or simply because she accepted his answer, but he knew the Sakura of the past wouldn't have just let it go and he was glad that she'd grown since graduation. During his time in the Academy, she – and the rest of the group Naruto had referred to as 'Uchihatards' – had annoyed him, but now he found it strangely nice to spend time with her. She still sometimes pushed for him to tell her things that he didn't necessarily want to, but she also seemed to know to let a subject drop when he _really_ didn't want to talk about it. He never would have imagined back at the Academy that she would become the sort of person that he could call one of his best friends, but he was glad that she had.

He glanced around the nearly empty room, noting the positions of the chuunin who looked bored, and then returned his attention to Sakura. "I'm sure he'll show up sooner or later. He probably got lost."

"Like he did when he went to the bathroom?"

The way she'd said it made it sound like she was insinuating something. "What do you mean by that?"

Sakura shrugged and looked off to the side. "Nothing, I guess. It's just weird the things that happen to him, you know? He fights the leader of some group of missing-nins and comes away without a scratch… then today he goes to the bathroom and shows up over a half hour later with a scroll and hardly a mark on him. Plus," she paused and considered her words carefully, "he's been acting… strange… today. He hasn't really been himself since sensei entered us in the Exam."

Sasuke frowned. It was true that Naruto had looked like he was carrying an unexplained weight for most of the day; certainly while they were in the woods it was evident. He was distracted and worried about something all the way up until he came back from the bathroom and then he was exhausted and… scared? Strange as it seemed, 'scared' was probably the best way to describe Naruto after he'd returned from his bathroom break. Scared and confused.

"All those clones probably took a lot out of him," Sasuke pointed out, well aware of the fact that he was making excuses for his friend and that he didn't believe a single word coming out of his own mouth, "but you're right, he's been different today. I don't think it's anything to worry about, though. He'll be the same dobe as ever by tomorrow."

Sakura nodded somewhat reluctantly. "Maybe," she conceded and then a smile knowing smile spread across her lips. "Maybe it has something to do with—"

She was cut off by the sound of a door being slammed. The two genin looked up to see a red haired boy with a large calabash gourd strapped to his back. The boy's cold green eyes that were surrounded by dark marks (making Sakura wonder if he was exceptionally tired or _really_ into eye shadow) locked onto the two members of Team Seven as he stalked towards them like a hungry predator.

"I've been looking for you two," he told them in a quiet, threatening voice. "Where's the blond boy?"

Sakura glanced at Sasuke, but the Uchiha's eyes were fixed on the Suna genin.

"Who wants to know?" Sasuke asked as he leaned back in his chair and sized the boy up.

"You don't know me?" the boy asked, looking slightly surprised.

"Should I?"

The two glared at each other for a moment and then the Suna genin nodded slowly as if realizing something. "It was just him, you two weren't even there."

"Weren't where?" Sakura asked.

The boy glanced at her just long enough to dismiss her existence as he turned back to Sasuke. "Tell the blond that Gaara of the Desert is looking for him… and that when we meet, I intend to kill him."

Sasuke rose to his feet and looked Gaara right in the eyes. The two of them were almost the exact same height; neither slouched, turned his head, or gave any sign of bowing before the other. "You'll hurt him over my dead body," Sasuke told him firmly. "He might be annoying sometimes, but he's my friend and the only person that's allowed to hurt him is Sakura."

Sakura made a sound of annoyance at the insinuation that she was violent with their blond friend. She hadn't hit him in over a week… if you didn't count pulling him off of a fence and leaving him at the mercy of a pack of nine year olds, or trying to hit him when he was being stupid just before Kakashi gave them their Chuunin Exam applications, or when she'd considered kicking him out of the tree…

Gaara continued to stare at Sasuke until one of the chuunin cleared his throat to let the boys know that they were being watched and that any fight would be stopped instantly. A small, eerie smile appeared on the redhead's face. "What's your name?"

"Uchiha Sasuke."

"Uchiha Sasuke. I'll be happy to kill you first so that I can step over your dead body and kill your friend," Gaara said and then turned and walked out of the room.

Sasuke continued to stare after him until the door closed and he glanced down at Sakura's worried face and returned to his seat.

Once again neither of them spoke for a long time, then Sakura whispered, "Do you ever feel like you've missed some important piece of information about Naruto?"

Sasuke couldn't help but smile, though there was a certain grimness to it. "All the time."

ooo

"What can I help you with, Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto asked with a false smile.

"I would have thought that you'd already know that," Kakashi replied as he leaned against the dusty desk and fixed his lone, visible eye on his student.

"Sorry, sensei, I'm not much of a mind reader."

"I never thought that you were, though that's not a bad theory either, I just assumed you would have _seen_ this conversation coming."

Naruto frowned and cocked an eyebrow as he gave Kakashi a funny look. "Um, sensei, are you… are you drunk?" he asked in almost a whisper.

Kakashi chuckled and shook his head. "Enough games, Naruto. Tell me how you're doing it?"

"Doing _what?_"

Kakashi held up his hand and began ticking things off on his fingers. "You knew the answer to the bell test even though no one else has ever passed it or even figured it out. You know taijutsu and ninjutsu that you shouldn't. You were able to defeat a ninja way above your level without significant injury – and yes, I know you're going to claim extenuating circumstances on that one, but I don't buy it. And, amongst other things… you gave yourself away when you didn't even bother signing your name on the paper test this morning."

Naruto sighed and closed his eyes. _'Stupid, smart Kakashi-sensei!'_

"I think," Kakashi said as he pushed away from the table and crossed the room so that he was standing over Naruto, "that you knew about my test and Ibiki-san's because you knew what was coming. I think that either you or someone you know can see into the future."

Naruto's eyes widened and for a second he just stared at Kakashi, then he let his head fall back and laughed.

Kakashi didn't interrupt him or act embarrassed at how comical his genin apparently found his theory, he simply waited patiently for Naruto to respond.

Finally, Naruto's head returned to its natural position as he wiped tears from his eyes. "Kakashi-sensei, you're a lot funnier than I ever gave you credit for."

"You're saying I'm wrong?"

"Of course," Naruto said, still chuckling, "I think seeing the future is probably impossible."

"Then how did you know all of those things when there was no way you could have?"

Naruto took a deep breath and looked the jounin in the eye. He _had_ planned on telling Kakashi around this time anyway, though he'd hoped to get all the way through the Chuunin Exam or at least to have killed Orochimaru first. With things this messed up, perhaps it would be a good idea to bring someone in on the secret. He had no idea where Orochimaru could be and had no business asking about. Kakashi, on the other hand, could go through more official channels and get the information Naruto needed to keep everyone safe.

He took another deep breath and ignored the irritable sick feeling that was gripping his stomach. One more breath and then he took the plunge. "Kakashi-sensei, I can't see the future," he whispered. "I'm _from_ the future…"

Kakashi rocked back on his heels. His most unpredictable student had done it again. He'd expected the playing dumb, he'd expected the laughter, and he'd expected an eventual denial. He had not, however, expected Naruto to counter the slightly insane theory with an even more outlandish claim. "Say that again," he said, wondering if perhaps his ears had deceived him, though he knew that was extremely unlikely.

"I'm not twelve," Naruto said with a tired smile. Then he let out a slow breath and seemed to straighten up as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. "I'm…" he paused and cocked his head to the side. "Do I have to count the months I've been in this body? That might take me past another birthday …" He shook his head and shrugged. "Never mind, I guess it doesn't matter. The point is that I'm from about twenty years in the future… I think. I was actually pretty sure until just a few hours ago, now…" He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "How long have you known?"

Kakashi's one visible eye was completely open as he stared at his student incredulously. "Are you just messing around again?" he asked.

Naruto shook his head. "No, I'm being totally serious."

"You can't expect me to just believe that with no proof."

Naruto smiled. "You wouldn't be the Kakashi I know if you did. Actually, I was a little worried you wouldn't ask." He held out his hand and as a blue ball of chakra formed within it. "My father, Namikaze Minato, the Fourth Hokage's personal jutsu, the Rasengan," he said with a fond smile. "Ero-sennin… uh, I mean, Jiraiya, would have taught it to me a few months from now. I can make a bigger one too. I developed that with him while we were on a training trip after Sasuke…" his voice trailed off. "Well, we were on a training trip," he repeated lamely. "I can take it a step farther as well, but it wouldn't be a good idea in a little room like this."

"A step farther?" Kakashi asked.

"You know it's incomplete… don't you?" Kakashi nodded. "Right, well in a couple of years you would have helped me figure out how to manipulate it elemental nature as well." Naruto puffed up his chest with no small measure of pride. "My natural inclination is towards Wind type chakra; I can add it to the Rasengan and create either a Fuuton: Rasengan or Rasenshuriken." Kakashi's eye widened still farther – something Naruto hadn't thought possible – at the name of the second jutsu. "I can't throw it or anything like that," he quickly amended. "It just looks like a shuriken when I make it… and I thought the name sounded kind of cool."

Kakashi was silent for a moment and then pushed his hands into his pant pockets and shook his head. "You understand I can't just take your word on this, right?"

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Two minutes ago you thought I could see the future, now you can't accept that I'm actually from there?"

"You just don't look thirty-five to me," Kakashi replied evenly. "And for some reason I can see you making all of this up just to keep me from figuring out what's really going on."

The blond shook his head and then stood up and brought his hands together. Henge!" When the smoke cleared, he was taller and older, his blond hair coming down past his shoulders and hanging down in front of his face until he brushed it back with one hand. "This is how I looked up until whatever happened that brought me back here. Now, I can't tell you what's going to happen in the immediate future because, honestly, I don't remember everything and… and what I did get right might have been more luck than anything else. What I can do is tell you a lot of what I know about you and a whole bunch of other people I haven't met yet and then you can decide if I'm telling the truth or not."

He took a deep breath and then listed as many things as he could remember off the top of his head without thinking too hard about them. Kakashi's old teammates, that Minato was instructed under Jiraiya, the members of Jiraiya's genin team, the fact that the Third Hokage was their sensei before becoming Hokage, what they could summon, why they were called the Sannin, why Orochimaru was kicked out of the village, the fact that Yamato – who Kakashi occasionally called Tenzo – was the only baby to survive Orochimaru's experiment with the First Hokage's cells, and anything else he could remember. It was a surprisingly long list of details, though he wasn't sure how much of it wasn't just common knowledge for anyone willing to pay attention. In an effort to come up with something he couldn't have just found in a scroll, he told Kakashi all about Jiraiya and Tsunade's personalities and things that he hoped were known to Kakashi but not found in some scroll in the library.

When he was done, the jounin looked… well, he looked about the same as always, actually. His wide eye had returned to normal and any traces of shock on what little could be seen of his face had been hidden.

"Do I need to keep going?" Naruto asked.

"I think I get the picture," Kakashi replied, and then he quickly added, "I'm not saying I necessarily believe you, but why didn't you tell me this in the beginning?"

"Would you have believed me?" Naruto shot back.

"No, but you could have made a believer out of me."

"Like I have now?" Naruto snorted with a shake of his head. He thought about it for a second, biting his lip, and then pushed the long hair back away from his face again. He'd forgotten how annoyingly uncooperative it could be. "There were some things that I wanted to do on my own… because I think that I deserve to be the one to do them and because if I told you they might change and I might lose my one shot."

Naruto cringed inwardly at how stupid it sounded now that his one shot had been a wasted effort. There was more to his reason for not telling Kakashi, however, and in the spirit of truthfulness he knew he should probably explain that as well. "I also didn't want you to know so you would still treat me like a kid and I could have a couple of months of being a young again. I never realized how carefree I was back then until I was an adult and everything got all screwed up. It was… nice having to do D Rank missions and watching Sasuke save us when I screwed up."

"You complained every time we got a mission." Kakashi pointed out.

"Well, yeah, I don't remember everything about being a kid, but I remember complaining about how easy the missions were even when I was the one always screwing up. That doesn't mean I didn't have fun." He looked down, then off to the side, and finally up at the ceiling and sighed. "It was nice just spending time with my friends. If I convinced you I was really an adult from the future, there's no way I could have just hung out with Sakura, Sasuke, Hinata or Konohamaru and his friends. I just would have been turned into an adult all over again and… I didn't want that, not yet."

Kakashi shook his head. "We could have worked something out."

"Even if we did, you wouldn't have treated me like Naruto. I would have been your equal or even maybe your superior." Kakashi scoffed at the idea, but Naruto didn't find it so unlikely. "I didn't want that either. In the future… my future… things went… bad. I just wanted to enjoy the good times again," he smiled and then added, "Plus, I didn't want to end up in front of Ibiki… or," he added with a smile and a wink, "any one of a dozen people who owe you a favor and can issue a warrant to have some interrogation jutsu caste on me… being forced to spill my guts or spend the rest of my life in some mental hospital."

Kakashi caught the reference to the time he'd caught Naruto sneaking back into his apartment when he was supposed to be sick. "So," he asked, "where do we go from here… assuming I believe that you really are from the future?"

"Well, I kind of figured that when I finally told you, you could help me fix things, but…"

"But what?"

"I'm not totally sure what to do now. Somehow I changed things and…" Naruto's voice trailed off as he tried to think of a way to tell Kakashi about his suspicions concerning what timeline he was actually in. In the end, he decided that he would keep his theory to himself, for now. He didn't really have any proof, outside of Orochimaru not being who he should have been, and he wasn't totally convinced that he believed the theory anyway. Regardless, he would have to treat most everything as if he were actually in his own timeline since he couldn't take the chance of having things follow some sort of parallel to the events that led to the horror that had been his future.

Naruto took a deep breath and then said, "Sasuke betrayed us in the future. It happened just a little while after the Exam. Orochimaru was supposed to meet us in the forest and put a curse seal on Sasuke that made him stronger… or something. Whatever it did, he changed after he got it. He decided that he couldn't get as strong as he needed to be to kill Itachi if he stayed here, so he went to Orochimaru. Orochimaru has this jutsu where he transfers his soul into someone else's body and he wanted to use it on Sasuke. Even though he knew about it, Sasuke stayed. I think he thought he could betray Orochimaru before he was taken over, but… well, in the end, Itachi was dead and Orochimaru had Sasuke's body."

"After that…" the blond closed his eyes and racked a hand through his long hair, "like I said… things went bad. I thought that if I kept up the facade of being a genin until the Exam, I could find Orochimaru and kill him before he could get to Sasuke. I found the guy he was supposed to be impersonating, but… it wasn't him. Now I don't know where he is or who he is or… anything, really."

Kakashi closed his eye and lowered his head, letting his thoughts speed through his brain without the distraction of a strange adult Naruto staring at him expectantly. "Okay," he said as he opened his eyes a moment later. "You're going to keep on being a genin and acting like one as much as possible. Stick close to Sasuke and keep your eyes open…" Naruto rolled those same eyes at the obviousness of the strategy "…while I do the same. You should have known better than to try something this big all on your own. Now that there are two of us looking, we'll hopefully have better luck spotting anything coming after Sasuke and stopping it. Until I've reported this to Hokage-sama, that's all we can do. Don't do anything too obvious, but I can help you cover up any action or comment that might expose you."

Naruto swallowed hard as the illusion of the adult vanished. "Is there anyway I can convince you to not tell the Third?"

Kakashi stopped and looked at his student – though he wasn't so sure he could call Naruto that anymore. "What?"

"Can we keep who I am just between us?"

The jounin shook his head. "No. This is too big. I have to tell Hokage-sama."

Naruto smiled weakly. "I don't suppose I could order you to keep it a secret since I'm sort of a Hokage also, could I?"

Kakashi couldn't help but grin. "Not until you drop the 'sort of' part."

The blond shrugged. "Fine, but make sure the Council doesn't find out about this."

"Why is that?"

"I don't know if it'll still be the same as what happened in my timeline, but let's just say that I don't remember all of them being the sort of people that I'd trust with this kind of information."

"Alright," Kakashi said with a nod. "For now this will just be between the three of us. I'll make sure Hokage-sama understands your desire for secrecy." Then he turned to leave, but as he opened the door Naruto's soft voice held him up for just a second.

"Thank you, sensei."

The moment the door closed, Naruto brought his fingers together. "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu." The clone appeared next to him, gave him a quick nod and then slipped through the door as silent as a summer breeze. Naruto sighed and rolled back onto the bed until he was staring up at the ceiling. He hated having to do it, but he wasn't willing to take the chance that Kakashi or even the Third would tell someone like Danzo what Naruto really was. With the clone spying on that conversation, at least he would be forewarned and might even have a chance to stop anything from happening that he didn't want to.

The thought that he might not really be in his own past hung in the air before him once more. He spent the rest of the day and night thinking about it, considering it, trying to think through its implications, and ultimately rejecting it. He couldn't say that it was impossible, nor could he deny that it explained a great many things, but he also couldn't accept it. If this wasn't his reality, his past, then he was living without a cause. Everything he'd done since waking up in this reality might have been pointless.

He loved his friends, he would protect them at all cost. That was his mission. He would live this second life as if he were certain that he was fighting against the real danger of the horrifying future he'd come from. He had no other choice.

o

o

A/N: Ugh, I hated writing the scene with Kakashi. I regret not killing him off against the missing-nin and replacing him with someone mentally handicapped that Naruto could manipulate without telling anyone who he really was… well, no, not really, that's just a joke, but that whole conversation was annoying to write and I dislike it a lot. Hopefully you don't mind it so much, because I spent the better part of a week trying to fix it and this was as good as it ever got. Maybe someday I'll think of a way to make it not suck so much, but for now it does what had to be done.

Anyway, I must say that I need to figure out a way to write crazy twists in every chapter. Not only did I go over 100 reviews of a chapter for the first time ever, but I did it in less than 24 hours! That's insane! I used to be ecstatic about getting 30 reviews for a chapter, then 40-50 became the norm, then 60 was pretty awesome and now this… reviews are like drugs, that's for sure. I get all twitchy now if I don't get my fix and I seem to need more every time to get that same 'high!'

Thanks for reading. Please review and let me know what you thought… or just do it to feed my addiction!

Tenketsu – the points from which chakra is expelled from the body.

Keirakurei – chakra coil system… not to be confused with Tenketsu, which are the holes from which chakra is released from the body.

Suzu Senbon no Genkaku – "Illusion Bell Needles." During the expansion of Shikamaru's fight against Kin, it is revealed that her bells allow her to cast a genjutsu when she rings them. The bells apparently ring at a certain frequency, which directly affects the brain and causes it to fall under her genjutsu. Personally, I thought Shikamaru's fight against her was awesome as it appeared in the manga, but I guess they needed to fill the episode with _something_ and this did make it so she wasn't completely worthless in comparison to the rest of her team.


	27. Chapter 26

Chapter 26

o

Early the next morning, Kakashi and a jounin from Iwagakure walked calmly down a long hallway running through the middle of the top level of the tower. There was a certain tension in both jounin's faces – or what could be seen of them anyway – as if neither was really excited about where they were going or who they were walking with. The few chuunin they passed along the way gave the duo quick glances and plenty of space, but showed only the faintest hint of interest in them. The Chuunin Selection Exam had long been a time where foreign officials and even ninja participated in negotiations of one variety or another. Given Iwagakure's tumultuous history with Konoha, there was little doubt that this was yet another meeting that would accomplish little, but served as a non-violent way for the two powerful villages to try to outmaneuver each other.

The jounin made their way in silence to a double door that was being guarded by two chuunin. The chuunin gave the Iwa jounin a suspicious glance, but opened the doors when Kakashi nodded to them. Then the two jounin quickly stepped inside and the doors closed behind them. Kakashi instantly turned and sealed the doors farther to keep any sound from being heard outside. When he was done, he gave the Iwa jounin a nod and then turned to face the original occupant of the room as the Iwa jounin vanished in a cloud of smoke that dissipated to reveal a very nervous looking Uzumaki Naruto.

"Well, Naruto, I see that your henge abilities are as good as ever," the Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen, said with a small chuckle that belied the seriousness of the situation. He was seated on the far side of the room behind a large wooden desk. "I'm thankful that you chose to use the skill to become something other than a naked woman, this time."

Naruto frowned. "Huh?"

"The night that you became a genin, you snuck into my house and used… I believe you called it _Sexy no Jutsu_," the Third explained.

Naruto smiled. "Sexy no Jutsu… wow, that takes me back…" He paused and gave the old man a curious look. "Did I really get you with that?"

Sarutobi coughed and looked slightly rankled. "Yes," he admitted somewhat sheepishly.

The blond chuckled. "Geez, I'm kind of disappointed. It's such an amateurish jutsu… I'd probably kill you with some of my later perverted ninjutsu!"

"Let's not find out," Kakashi sighed, shaking his head.

"So," Sarutobi said after a moment, "explain what's going on, please."

"Kakashi-sensei already told you," Naruto pointed out.

Sarutobi smiled. "Yes, but I'd like you to tell me."

Naruto nodded as the reason for the retelling occurred to him. Kakashi, with his incredible mind and ability to remember things, had repeated everything Naruto had told him nearly word for word the night before – as Naruto's clone had heard from his perch just outside the window. Now, Naruto would have to retell at least some of what he'd said without contradicting himself, less he be exposed as a liar. Not exactly a foolproof plan, but exactly the sort of thing he should have expected out of Sarutobi. The old man had seemed to accept his story as true, but still left a trap for him to fall into should he be lying.

Fortunately, he wasn't lying and none of what he'd said that night before was hard to remember. The only thing he really had to watch out for was an accidental slip of the tongue since both of them would be looking for some mistake and might pounce on it before he could correct himself on his own. After Kakashi had left the previous night, Naruto had remained secluded and had not gotten much sleep as he continued to contemplate the possible causes for the change in who and where Orochimaru was. Despite his best efforts, the idea of being in some sort of alternate timeline from the very beginning was the only thing he'd managed to come up with that seemed 'logical' (or as logical as anything in this messed up situation could get).

So he repeated a lot of what he had told Kakashi the night before. He mostly focused on Tsunade and Jiraiya since Sarutobi knew them better than almost anyone and would be able to see that Naruto really did know these people he could not possibly have met. The Third listened carefully and asked thoughtful questions that Naruto was generally able to answer with ease.

Eventually the conversation strayed towards more current topics, such as the possible coming war and the traitor in their midst.

"Kakashi says that you don't know this for sure," Sarutobi told him, leaning forward in his chair.

Naruto nodded. "That's true. I mean, I've been trying to change things left and right, so a lot has already happened differently from what I remember. I can't really tell what's going to happen most of the time especially since Orochimaru wasn't who he was supposed to be."

The Third propped his elbows up on the desk and let his chin rest on top of his folded hands as a thoughtful expression appeared on his face. "Yes, it is interesting that your knowledge was so flawed in this one area. Do you have any ideas as to what could have caused this change?"

Naruto's eyes shifted ever so slightly to the side. "None," he lied.

The old man' eyes narrowed and Naruto suspected his lie had been spotted. "I hope you understand that your… claim… is a difficult one to accept."

"You don't have to believe me," Naruto countered. "If you want to just think I'm a genin with a big imagination and an incredible amount of luck, that's fine. It might even be easier for me if you did."

"Unfortunately," Sarutobi sighed, "that is not an option either. If what you claim is true, there is a very grave danger to the village. If what you claim is an… exaggeration, then you are most likely some sort of spy or have access to a spy who is feeding you your information."

"Why would a spy bother figuring out what Kakashi-sensei or Ibiki-san's tests were going to be?"

"A very good question," Sarutobi replied, "but one with a number of answers. Perhaps it was simply to make sure that you passed Kakashi's test so that you would be well placed within the ninja corps; perhaps he or she wanted to make sure that you made it through the first test; perhaps it was so you could plant information that would lead us to thinking you actually were what you claim and distracting us from more important matters…"

Naruto nodded slowly. "Fine, then what should we do? Do you want to take me to some training grounds and show you jutsu that haven't been invented yet? That's about the only proof I really have, I didn't exactly pack for the trip."

The old man grinned and stroked his goatee. "Nothing so elaborate, yet, though I'm always interested in seeing new jutsu. I'm simply going to ask you a question, Naruto, and I expect an honest answer." He paused, waited for a moment, and then said, "When you were sick a few weeks ago, what were you really doing?"

Naruto tried not to smile and nearly succeeded. This conversation hadn't seemed as easy as the one with Kakashi and it was a relief to see it heading in a more comfortable direction. The previous night, he now suspected, Kakashi was simply gathering information without forming any sort of concrete conclusion. _This_ was where he was going to either convince them or get into some real trouble. "I made two shadow clones – one to get sick and the other to pretend to be sick in case anyone visited me – and then went to the Wave Country. I knew Kurenai and Team Eight were going to be fighting Zabuza and Haku because my team got that mission when I was a kid. I didn't want my friends getting themselves killed defending Tazuna's bridge."

Sarutobi smiled as he leaned back in his chair. "How interesting. Of course, Hyuuga Hinata could simply have told you about the mission."

"No she couldn't," Kakashi spoke up, "he actually came out and told me this when I found him back at his apartment after he was missing. He said that he ran all the way to another village to fight some missing-nin. At the time, I thought he was being sarcastic, but the timing is too coincidental for that, isn't it?"

The Third's smile grew larger and Naruto could see that he was at least partially convinced. At that moment, he could have kissed Kakashi for having such an incredible brain. "Hinata-chan saw me, didn't she?" he asked rather than doing anything he would instantly regret – if he survived.

"Yes," the Third chuckled, "those wonderful eyes of the Hyuuga are hard to deceive, though I don't think she really believed it herself."

"That's good. It would be awkward trying to explain that to her."

"Speaking of explaining things," the Third said as he reached over and began to prepare his pipe, "why didn't you want the Village Council to know about your… history?"

"You deal with them all the time, you should know better than anyone," Naruto replied coldly. "Even if they don't act like that to you, you have to know how they feel about me."

"But surely in a situation like this…"

Naruto shook his head and scowled. "You can trust them if you want, but I won't. In the future they were perfectly willing to use me for their own purposes while fighting me at every turn. They gave me all of the responsibility of being Hokage, but they never let me have the title and they hated hearing people call me 'Hokage-sama' even more than I did." He looked down at his little body and sighed. "I'm just a little kid right now, no matter how you look at it, so I can't stop you from telling them or doing whatever you want, but please… please don't tell them about me."

The Third nodded slowly. "Very well. For the time being, only the three of us will be allowed to know this information." He held Naruto's gaze for a moment and then added, "Do not tell your friends."

Naruto let out a relieved sigh and shrugged. "As if I'd want to."

"Good. In that case, let's discuss where we should go from here." Sarutobi lit his pipe and took a couple of puffs on it to get it going. Then he leaned back in his chair and blew out a mouthful of smoke. "Given that you are _apparently_ not a genin, it seems slightly unfair to have you competing against your physical peers." Naruto started to object, but the Hokage held up his hand and silenced him. "However, given the potential dangers surrounding us at the moment, I must request that you keep your current rank and remain with your teammates, acting as you have been."

Naruto smiled and nodded. "Thank you."

"It is simply where you will do the most good at the moment, nothing more," the Third replied as he took another puff on his pipe. "I must ask, however, that you tell me what you remember of the Chuunin Exam you originally went through. If we are to prepare for what is to come, we must know what we are facing."

"You die," Naruto said quickly, wanting to make sure that it was out before he could be stopped.

The Third took the news surprisingly well. "Everyone dies, it's just a matter or when and how."

"During the third test and fighting Orochimaru," Naruto supplied. "You did something to him, though. It made his arms not work… like you sealed them or something. He went to Tsunade-baachan and tried to get her to fix them, but she refused."

"Sealed them? How?"

Naruto shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. I wasn't there. He set up this barrier and the two of you fought. Sakura and I went and fought Gaara."

"The Kazekage's son."

"He's a jinchuriki, like me," Naruto added.

The Third nodded thoughtfully. "So, the reports are true… Suna has sealed their bijou in another host."

"Yeah, I don't remember the whole story of how, but I think they killed his mom when they did it. He's pretty confused right now, but he'll get better."

"Are you sure?"

Naruto's jaw flexed. "Absolutely."

"Very well, do you remember anything else about the battle?"

Naruto closed his eyes and did his best to remember. "There were giant snakes, I don't know how many, but more than one. Kakashi had Pakkun help us follow Sasuke and… there was a genjutsu, I think. People were asleep…" He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, trying to find anything in his head that he remembered about the invasion, but came up empty. "That's all I remember, except that Oto and Suna attacked during Sasuke's match against Gaara in the first round."

"I understand," Sarutobi said with a smile. "The details are important now, but in the middle of a battle – one that took place many years ago from your perspective – it's hard to focus on anything but what is directly in front of you. For now, go back to your teammates and prepare for what you believe is coming. There will be others watching over Sasuke as well, though they won't know specifically why, but stay on alert. Orochimaru is a genius who will not reveal himself until he can gain the most from it while giving up as little as possible. Even if you accidentally did something to change when and where he appears, if he is truly after Sasuke, he will make his appearance when we least expect it. If you remember anything else that will be useful to us, please tell Kakashi. He can more easily meet with me without arousing suspicions. You are dismissed"

Naruto – once again disguised as the Iwa jounin – bowed his head just enough to be respectful and turned to leave. Just before he opened the door, he paused and glanced over his shoulder. "Have you summoned Jiraiya back to the village yet?"

The Third smiled. "I sent word to him when Kakashi came to me believing that you were possibly being influenced by the Kyuubi. He should be here within a few days, if he hasn't arrived already. Should I ask him to find you when he gets around to checking in with me?"

Naruto grinned. "No, I think I'll know where to find him."

ooo

"What do you think?" Kakashi asked after Naruto was gone.

"I think that he is either telling the truth or an exceptionally convincing liar," Sarutobi replied.

"You believe him, then? That he's really from the future?"

The old man raised a questioning eyebrow. "You don't believe him?"

Kakashi sighed and frowned under his mask. "I don't know. What he says sounds insane, but… he knows so many things that he shouldn't. Of course…" His voice trailed off as his thoughts began running out in front of him.

"There are far simpler explanations for his knowledge," The Third supplied for him. "Yes. And those explanations can't be ignored, but neither can the possibility that he is telling the truth." He took a deep drag on his pipe and blew out a ring that drifted lazily up towards the ceiling. "The fact that he knew about Team Eight's mission is interesting. Hinata might have told him, but for him to have mentioned it to you before ever seeing her is more difficult to explain away than the rest of his knowledge. It could still just be a coincidence, but to dismiss everything he's said almost takes too much explaining to seem credible."

"Then you _do_ believe him."

"I believe in possibilities," Sarutobi smiled. "I believe that it is very possible that Naruto is telling the truth, but I also believe that he could be a well informed liar. It would be foolish to simply take his word for it, but equally foolish to dismiss his warnings as the ravings of a lunatic. For now, it doesn't hurt us to be on guard, but keep your eyes on Naruto as well."

Kakashi bowed his head and left the room while the Third Hokage leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling, a thoughtful expression on his face.

ooo

Naruto found Sasuke and Sakura eating breakfast in the dining area later that morning. The two smiled when they spotted him walking towards their little table, but not before a strange look passed between them.

"What was that about?" he asked as he pulled up a seat and dug into his breakfast.

"We met your Sand genin from yesterday," Sasuke told him calmly.

Naruto blinked in surprise and then cringed. "Oh yeah? How is Gaara?"

"He says he's going to _kill_ you," Sakura said with a hint of worry in her voice, "and Sasuke-kun, too."

Naruto chuckled at the look on her face. "Well, I guess it couldn't be helped. Just stay away from him, if you can. He won't do anything outside of the Exam, I don't think."

"How do you know him so well?" Sasuke asked.

"My clones fought him yesterday," Naruto replied a bit too quickly.

"And you know that he won't do anything outside of the Exam just from that?"

Naruto shrugged. "Mostly. Of course, I've heard about him before then. Some old ninja said he was the Kazekage's son, so I doubt he'd do anything to break the treaty."

"What old ninja?" Sakura asked.

Naruto shook his head. "Just some guy. He was old. He was a ninja. He was an old ninja; I don't know who he was."

Sakura frowned and bit her tongue. "It's just kind of weird that someone would tell you something like that since…"

"Since people don't really like me?" Naruto asked with a knowing grin as her voice trailed off. "He wasn't telling me. He just mentioned Gaara being the Kazekage's son to some other guy and said that he wears a really big gourd on his back. It wasn't hard to figure out who he was talking about. Sometime people just ignore me; it's easy to overhear all sorts of things when people try to pretend you don't exist."

"I wasn't doubting you," Sakura said quickly. "I just… you've been acting really weird the last couple of days and we… _I_… want to know why. Yesterday you looked like you were really worried about something and then that Gaara kid comes up threatening to kill you and…" She sighed and centered her eyes on him. "What's going on with you lately?"

Naruto's smile was visibly forced. "Nothing," he told her as evenly as he could. "I just want us to pass this Exam so we can start taking some harder missions, that's all."

Sakura wasn't convinced. "Really?"

"Is there something else I should be worried about?"

"No," she admitted with a sigh, "it just seems like more than that to me."

"Well, it's not," Naruto said with a smile. "I'm pretty straight forward; what you see is what you get."

Sakura returned the smile and nodded – though there was still a little hesitation in her movements. "I guess that's true," she said, taking a bite of her breakfast. "Maybe," she added as she swallowed, "that's what—"

Whatever she was going to say was interrupted by a loud cheer as the door was kicked open. Kiba, Akamaru, Shino, and lastly Hinata stepped into the room. Kiba was practically dancing with excitement as he helped himself to some food and sat at the table next to Team Seven's.

"You guys made it too?" he asked as he set a plate on the ground for Akamaru to eat from. He let his eyes settle on Naruto and grinned, showing off his enlarged canine teeth. "I guess luck really can carry you through a test like this."

"Well," Naruto replied with a similar grin, "you got put on Shino and Hinata-chan's team; that piece of luck has carried you through your whole ninja career so far."

"Same goes for you getting put on Sasuke and Sakura's team, huh?"

Naruto's smile grew larger as he and Kiba continued to throw good natured insults back and forth. In a way, it was strangely relaxing to be able to participate in something so juvenile. Fears of what timeline he was in, where Orochimaru was and what he was plotting, and how he would be able to hold everything together and make a better future for his friends all seemed to melt away as one childish, joking barb after another spilled from his mouth as he and Kiba "bickered."

This was one of the reasons he'd been so reluctant to tell Kakashi or anyone else about who he really was. It might not be the main reason or even a good reason, but it was definitely _one_ of the reasons. How could he expect his friends to act like this if they knew who he really was? Very few young teens would joke this way with an adult, especially an adult who was at least close to being Hokage. If the truth had come out before now, or if it had gotten out to all of his friends, this fun little moment –and millions more just like it – could never have happened.

A contented sigh slipped through Naruto's smiling lips as Hinata tried to make peace between he and Kiba while Sakura simply leaned over, smacked him on the back of the head and told him not to be an idiot.

It really did feel good to just be a kid again.

ooo

Later that afternoon, Naruto was quietly enjoying a warm summer sun on a balcony overlooking the forest. Every once in a while he would hear what might have been a battle cry, but other than that there was nothing to interrupt the illusion that he was looking at a beautiful, ancient forest on a near cloudless summer day. Somewhere inside the tower, Kakashi was watching over Sakura and Sasuke having surreptitiously maneuvered Sasuke into a conversation so that Naruto could be relieved of the duty of watching his friend for a little while. It wasn't a planned thing, necessarily, but Naruto had noticed what Kakashi was doing and claimed boredom with the topic so he could go and relax for a couple of minutes. Between Kakashi and whatever protection the Third had organized, Sasuke was probably as safe as he could be.

Obviously he and Kakashi had to stay close to Sasuke until the potential danger from Orochimaru was over, but they couldn't both be doing that all the time. Naruto would be the primary one to stay with him simply because it was expected that the teams would stick together until the test ended and because they were friends. Unfortunately, it was hard work being on alert all the time and it caused him to act noticeably different from how he normally would. If Kakashi gave him a break every once in a while, he could rest and relax and be more alert when it _had _to be him doing the watching.

"The bastard better show up soon," he grumbled to himself as he watched the way the faint breeze made the tops of the trees seem to be an immense, green ocean as the leaves and branches rippled and swayed, "this wait is killing me."

Suddenly a menacing cloud of killer intent settled over him like a heavy blanket. Naruto stiffened at the feeling, but then took a deep breath and let it slide over him.

It wasn't Orochimaru.

Orochimaru – if he felt like he needed to kill Naruto for some reason – wouldn't have advertised his presence until Naruto was already dead. Plus, every time he'd ever felt Orochimaru's killer intent it had been ten times worse than this. No, this was someone who was weaker than that; someone who gave off killer intent almost out of habit. This person didn't care if he was noticed, in fact, he probably wanted to be.

"How have you been Gaara?" Naruto asked without turning around.

Gaara dropped from his perch on the wall and landed in a crouch, one hand gently touching the floor, the other at his side, ready to strike. "I've been looking for you," he told Naruto calmly.

Naruto smiled. "I heard that. You know, in the future, I'd rather you just came to me instead of telling my friends you're going to kill me. It seems to worry them."

"I don't care."

Naruto turned and casually put his hands in his pocket. "No, I guess you probably don't."

Still kneeling, the jinchuriki asked, "What is your name?"

Naruto grinned. Perhaps, if everything worked out right, this meeting would be told in history books as the day two great Kages met before they'd ascended to their eventual positions as leaders of their villages. He suspected that the Suna version would leave out all the killer intent rolling off of Gaara. "Uzumaki Naruto."

Gaara rose slowly, like steam rising from the ground, until he was at his full height. "I'm going to kill you."

That was probably another part that would be conveniently left out of the story should it ever be written down.

Naruto watched his future friend calmly for a moment and then shrugged. "Why would you want to do that?"

"Because I think you will be worth it. Your death will validate my existence for a while."

The blond shook his head. "You don't need to kill me for me to validate your existence. I'm doing that right now."

Gaara's eyes hardened. "Killing anyone who is not me is the only way for me to feel alive."

"That's not true," Naruto told the red haired boy. "There are plenty of other things that will make you feel alive. Friendship, for one. I'm standing here, not afraid of you and I don't hate you. I'm acknowledging your existence… and I want us to be friends."

Gaara scoffed. "I don't need, or want, friends."

Naruto's calm eyes never wavered from the empty pools of Gaara's. "Yes, you do. You want a friend so badly you can't stand it. You want someone who will love you so much that it's eating you inside and you'll kill just to stop the pain."

Gaara's hand shot forward without warning, a cloud of sand following it.

Naruto swatted the sand away without taking his eyes off of his friend. "I think you want to kill everyone so that there won't be anyone left to reject you or try to hurt you."

Gaara's eyes widened ever so slightly and for the first time his expression became one of confusion.

"I know who you are Gaara," Naruto said as he took a small step towards the jinchuriki. "I know what your dad sealed inside you." He reached up and brushed the whisker marks on his own cheeks. "We're alike in that way, I guess. I know what you've gone through… and I'm not scared of you. I don't hate you. You're my friend, even if you don't know it yet."

Gaara winced and grabbed his head as he took a stumbling step backwards, but the episode only lasted a few seconds. When he straightened back up, the confusion had left his face, replaced by annoyance and anger. "I don't want you as my friend," he told Naruto firmly, "I only want to kill you. That's all the validation I need from you."

Naruto tried to gauge the other boy's mood to see if it would be worth while to push any harder than he already had. He didn't want Gaara snapping and transforming or anything like that. After a moment he sighed and nodded. "Fine. I'll let you keep thinking that, for now, but stay away from my friends."

"Try to stop me."

A second Naruto stepped out of the shadows of the doorway behind Gaara and held a kunai to the red head's throat. "It wouldn't be that hard," the second Naruto whispered in his future friend's ear. Chakra pulsed along the blade as he brought it to within a centimeter of touching Gaara's throat. "And don't think that armor of sand will protect you from me. I could cut right through it if I really wanted to."

Gaara didn't show a hint of fear as he continued to stare at the Naruto in front of him, almost totally ignoring the blade at his throat.

Naruto smiled warmly and said, "You didn't really think I'd just be standing here with my back to a doorway, did you?" When Gaara didn't reply, the blond's smile fell away and he added in a serious voice, "I've already told you this, but I know what your village is planning during the Chuunin Exam. If they go through with it, Konoha is prepared for the attack. You don't have the forces to overpower us in a straight fight and you don't have the element of surprise. If Suna attacks, we will stop you and it won't be pretty. I suggest you let your superiors know that their secret is out."

Gaara didn't even blink as the accusation was thrown in his face. "You keep saying things that don't mean anything to me and pretending that I should understand you. It's very annoying." Sand crushed the clone behind him in the blink of an eye and then swarmed around Gaara as it headed towards Naruto.

Naruto leaned back against the railing as the sand approached and then tipped over the edge. It was a twelve story drop.

The blond's hand shot out and caught the edge of the balcony at the last second, swinging himself towards the side of the building where his feet stuck firmly as he took off running.

Gaara walked calmly to the side of the balcony and looked down, his face impassive as the sand began to give chase.

"You're still being too hasty!" Naruto called out with a laugh as he threw a kunai and then rounded the corner of the building and disappeared from sight.

Gaara's sand sprang up in front of him, but it was unnecessary as the kunai struck the rail with enough force to drive it nearly half way through the piece of wood. Gaara looked down at the kunai for a moment. There had been a lot of force behind the throw and it had hit the center of the rail so perfectly that there was no doubt it was totally intentional. On the run, using chakra to hold himself to a wall, and he still had that kind of accuracy? It was impressive.

A small smile appeared on his face as he turned and walked back inside. He was definitely going to enjoy killing Uzumaki Naruto.

ooo

The next day, Sakura was beginning to feel a touch of cabin fever. She enjoyed spending time with her teammates and even with her former classmates, but despite the size of the tower she was beginning to feel claustrophobic having them always around her. She could, of course, go off and find some dusty old room to hang out in if she needed a break, but she still felt trapped and any place that was really interesting enough to spend any time in was usually occupied by at least one or two other people.

Strangely enough, Naruto had been the worst of them so far. He seemed to seek out both her and Sasuke's company almost constantly. He wasn't annoying about it or anything, but any time she found herself alone or with Sasuke and no one else, Naruto appeared within a few minutes. Probably this was due to the fact that he'd spent so long as a child in isolation that he didn't realize that some people actually _wanted_ to be alone from time to time. It might also have had to do with whatever it was that had made him act so strangely lately.

Sasuke had said that he thought Naruto would get better now that they had passed the second test, but it actually seemed to have made him worse. He did seem a little more cheerful and whatever weight he'd been carrying had noticeably lessened, but he was still acting very strange. It was like he expected to be jumped at any minute.

Perhaps he was more worried about Gaara of the Desert than he'd initially let on.

She shuddered at the thought of the boy saying that he planned on killing Naruto. He just stated it like it was a fact, without even a hint of remorse or feeling. He planned on killing Naruto and that was that. Then, after Sasuke stood up to him, he simply added that he would be happy to kill Sasuke as well.

Sakura knew that there were people like that in the world, but to see one her age was a little terrifying. It was good there were so many chuunin around to stop any fights from breaking out. At least with them and – occasionally Kakashi or another jounin – around, Gaara couldn't attack without getting himself kicked out of the Exam… not that someone like him would probably care too much about that.

"Hey, Forehead gir… I mean, Sakura," Ino's voice called out from back the way Sakura had come from.

Sakura sighed again and rolled her eyes. This was not what she needed. "What do you want, Ino-p…" Her insult trailed off as she suddenly remembered of Naruto's remark that she and Ino really didn't need to keep up the feud that had developed between them. Maybe it was the look on Ino's face, which seemed to be missing a lot of the haughtiness Sakura normally associated with her former friend or maybe it was just that she was feeling weary after being in such cramped quarters for the past few days and didn't have the energy that she normally did, but for some reason Sakura didn't feel like fighting with Ino at the moment. As weird as it still felt, despite how often it had been happening lately, she had to admit that Naruto might be right about them. After all, why should she care if Ino liked Sasuke? Sasuke was smart enough to make up his own mind and choose the woman who made him happiest. If that was, tragically, Ino, would Sakura really be unhappy about it?

Yes, of course she would be, but she also would be happy that he was happy… if only a little. She really did want what was best for Sasuke, even if it wasn't her. She just really, really, _really_ hoped that it_ would_ be her.

"Sorry," she said with an apologetic smile, "I meant: Hi Ino, how are you?"

Ino gave her a funny look and then a small smile formed on her lips as well. "I just…" she looked to the side almost nervously and then closed her eyes as if forcing herself to say something she didn't totally want to admit. "I just wanted to say… thanks, for the other day in the forest. We would have been in trouble if you guys hadn't shown up… it was… _nice_ of you to help us."

Sakura frowned and stared at the blonde girl in confusion for a second before recalling what had prompted Naruto to comment on her relationship with Ino. "Oh, that. Look Ino-p… er, _Ino_," clearly old habits died hard, "that wasn't me."

"I know, Shikamaru told me about it being shadow clones. Your jounin must be pretty amazing to have taught you something like that already."

"No," Sakura said with a small chuckle, "I mean it _really_ wasn't me. I don't know Kage Bunshin no Jutsu. Naruto is the only one on our team who can use it; you should be thanking him."

Ino took a second to absorb this news and then seemed to visibly deflate. "There's no way I'm thanking that dumbass," she said resolutely. Then her confidence returned at full force as she drew herself up and put her hands on her hips. "Well, I guess this simplifies things between us, doesn't it, _Forehead-girl_?

Sakura felt her heckles rise, but pushed her annoyance back down. "Ino," she said quietly, "I don't want to fight over Sasuke-kun anymore. I… I miss my friend."

Ino took a step back, her eyes wide with surprise. "What are you talking about?" She waited for a second to see if Sakura would laugh or give some other clue that she was playing a joke, but none came. Sakura looked genuinely honest and Ino had never known her to be this good of an actress. "Are you saying that you're giving up on Sasuke-kun?

"NO!" Sakura yelled and then covered her mouth in embarrassment. "Uh, no. I lo… I really like him, but if he chooses you, it's okay. I just want him to be happy."

Ino still didn't look like she was totally buying it.

"I always thought that Sasuke-kun would fall in love with me if I grew my hair out or had a certain type of body or acted a certain way… but Sasuke-kun isn't like that. If he falls in love with someone, it will be because of who they are, not what they look like." Sakura smiled in an effort to hide the thoughtful frown that was threatening to spread across her lips. What she was saying – and what she truly believed – sounded a lot like what Naruto had told her all those weeks ago. When _had_ he gotten so damn smart?

"And anyway," she went on, trying to push Naruto out of her head for a moment, "none of those things are me. I don't have your body, and I don't like acting like I did when we were in the Academy… I don't even like having my hair this long! Sasuke-kun isn't so shallow that he'd pick someone for those things rather than who they really are."

Ino was silent for a while as she thought about Sakura's words and took in this new, more confident young woman. Not that long ago, Sakura had been so shy and self-conscious that she tried to hide her forehead behind ugly bangs because she was convinced she would get teased about its size. That girl was obviously long gone now and Ino wondered if her act of befriending Sakura had had a role in creating this new woman. She found herself strangely hoping it had.

Not that she was going to lose to Sakura in anything or give up their rivalry just because Sakura _claimed _she didn't feel like playing anymore, of course! Ino had been the queen bee in the Sasuke fan club for far too long not to realize that actions and intent did not always follow the kind words coming out of someone's mouth.

"Then you won't mind if I go ask him out right now, will you?" she asked with a sly smile.

Sakura winced and her eye twitched, but she didn't lash out or yell or do anything that she would have just a couple of months ago. "You can try," she said with a smile, "but I don't think he's interested in dating anyone at the moment. All he talks about is the Chuunin Exam."

Ino bit her lip and brushed a stray strand of blond hair out of her eye. She watched Sakura closely for another few seconds and then said, "Holy shit! You're serious, aren't you?"

"I'm not saying that I won't be heartbroken if he chose someone besides me, or anything," Sakura clarified, "but I'd be happy for him…" she paused and then added, "…eventually. And if it was you, well, _eventually_, I'd be happy that my friends could make each other happy."

Ino nodded slowly. "Okay, I get it. I see what you're doing." She grinned mischievously and pointed a finger in Sakura's face. "I won't lose to you, Haruno Sakura! You think you can out _nice_ me? I'll be ten times the friend you'll ever be!"

Sakura blinked in confusion and then shook her head. "What?!?"

"You heard me," Ino said with a wink as her smile grew larger. "You might have won this round by asking to be friends again, but I'll still beat you in the long run. When we're old and… well," she giggled, "still beautiful, of course… you'll look back on our friendship and realize that I was a way better friend to you than you ever were to me."

"Ino, I…"

Ino grabbed Sakura by the hand and began dragging her back towards the main portion of the tower. "Come on," she said, "I can't take looking at that ugly hair for another minute. Seriously, it's a good thing Sasuke-kun isn't so shallow as to pick a girl based on her hair because long hair really doesn't suit your face. I'll have it all fixed up for you in no time. Even if he doesn't care about hair, he'll have to be blind not to see what a knockout you're going to be when I'm done with you… well, unless you're standing next to me, of course."

Sakura tried to slow her (maybe?) once-again-friend down so she could figure out what was happening, but Ino's grip was firm and her exuberance contagious. It wasn't long before Sakura found herself caught up in the friendship that had rescued her childhood from the misery that her early Academy days had started out as. The two kunoichi found themselves a secluded room without too much dust and talked and laughed and even cried as they caught up with what had been happening in each other's lives.

When it was all said and done, Sakura had a new hair cut that she was extremely pleased with and, more importantly, she had her friend back.

ooo

Despite being on constant alert for Orochimaru and having to worry about Gaara trying something stupid, the next few days passed easily enough for Naruto. It was irritating to have to watch over Sasuke all the time, but fortunately his teammate didn't seem to realize that it was happening or didn't care if he did. Even more annoying was that fact that after several days of anxiously waiting and watching, he had nothing to show for his effort. Of course, if he did have something to show for his efforts, it would mean that Orochimaru had shown up and he'd been forced to fight the Sannin with a bunch of people around to get in the way…

Perhaps some irritations were really blessings in disguise, though that didn't make them any less annoying.

Naruto made sure that he got a close look at each genin team as they came in, even though most were Konoha teams that should be safe. Kakashi, on the other hand, checked the chuunin guarding and running the tower with similar results.

Orochimaru simply wasn't there… yet.

As the 120th hour came and went, Naruto did his best to force himself to accept that something had changed Orochimaru's plan and simply be on the lookout for whatever that change was.

Events were changing – more than he wanted, once again – and he just had to deal with it. Strangely, despite the differences, some things still remained the same. The sudden change in Sakura's hairstyle, for instance, had shocked him. He couldn't remember exactly when Sakura had made the change, but she'd never let it past her shoulders once she cut it the first time. He'd wondered if she would cut it in this timeline – perhaps this was a reality where she _liked_ long hair – but hadn't realized how much he wanted her to until it was done. Now she was not only his friend, but she looked a lot more like the beautiful woman she was growing up to be all over again.

With the second test now over, the surviving teams were called to meet in one of the large rooms on the ground level of the tower. The room chosen was similar to the one where Naruto and his team had met up with Kakashi when they first arrived, except this one was slightly larger, with an upraised portion that looked like a small stage, and an immense stone statue of two arms coming together as the hands formed the Ram seal.

The seven teams that had passed the second test lined up in rows facing the stage were Sarutobi, each team's jounin sensei, Anko, Ibiki, and a select group of chuunin stood at attention.

Naruto's eyes strayed towards Kabuto and his team as the Third began his speech about the importance of the Exam itself and the reasons why preliminary matches would need to take place. Kabuto looked perfectly at ease, though a bit dirty and tired, as he listened politely to the speech. Nothing about him even hinted that he was a spy. Naruto had watched as Kabuto and his team arrived at about the same time as Team Ten, it looked like he'd found them and offered his help – just as he had with Team Seven back when Naruto had first taken this test.

Was it a coincidence that it had happened again? Was it part of some plan to endear himself to someone he thought might be close to Sasuke? Was it part of some deeper plan that Naruto couldn't understand? Or was he simply being nice?

Kabuto had always been a difficult one for Naruto to understand. His motivations were strange and his actions stranger still. Sometimes he helped his enemies, sometimes he fought to kill them… sometimes he did both in the same day! He was always working at a level that Naruto didn't naturally deal with. Looking underneath the underneath wasn't enough to grasp who he was; you had to look _underneath_ the underneath of the underneath.

Naruto had enough trouble just looking underneath the first underneath.

"…this is not just a test," the Third said as Naruto returned his attention to the speech and tried to ignore his concerns about Kabuto and his motivations for the moment. "This is a life-risking battle with your dreams and your country's prestige on the line." Sarutobi paused, took his pipe from his mouth and let his gaze travel across each of the genin before him, pausing ever so briefly when he met Naruto's eyes.

"I don't care," Gaara growled from a few rows over. "You're talking too much, old man. Just tell us about the life-risking battle and let's get on with it."

Rather than get upset, Sarutobi simply returned his pipe to his mouth and smiled. "Yes, let's talk about the third test…"

"Actually, if you will allow me, Hokage-sama," a young man said with a cough as he appeared in small cloud of smoke, kneeling before the Third, "as referee, I'd like to tell them about it."

The Third smiled graciously and nodded his head. "By all means, Hayate."

Hayate turned to the genin and gave them a weak smile as he lifted a clipboard and glanced over it. His near-shoulder length oily, brown hair hung down in his face underneath his bandana-style hitai-ate and his eyes had bags under them. He brought his hand up to his mouth and coughed once more. "Hello everyone, I'm Gekkou Hayate," he said with a sniffle.

Most of the genin standing before him shuffled nervously and glanced at one another as if trying to see if their fellow genin were seeing the same thing they were. Hayate looked like a stiff breeze could knock him over and from the sound of his cough and the bags under his eyes, he would probably have been better off in bed than serving as a referee.

Naruto didn't care about that, he was more concerned with the fact that he couldn't seem to place Hayate's face. Had he seen this man before or was this some sort of a random change that would only occur if he really was in another timeline? He hadn't asked Sarutobi to change anything about the Exam – and there should have been no reason for the change to be made even now that the old man had been told that he was from the future. It was possible, Naruto supposed, that he was one of the people who should have been on the mission to Kogane. If that was the case, then certainly his illness could have gotten him killed… perhaps that was what started the whole chain of events that led to Orochimaru not showing up where he was supposed to be.

Of course, it was possible that Orochimaru's absence was due to Sasuke lack of a Sharingan. Naruto didn't remember Sasuke making it common knowledge back then, but if Kabuto had picked it up and passed it along to Orochimaru the first time – leading to the attack by allied the Sound and Sand ninja – then Sasuke not having his Sharingan yet was the best possible thing that could have happened… and also the worst, as it made things totally different from the way he remembered them.

Of course, he wasn't sure when Sasuke would have leaked that info between them returning from the Wave Country and the start of the Chuunin Exam. Given that Team Eight had come home early because of the injury to Akamaru, Naruto's old team would have actually only been back in Konoha for a few weeks before the Chuunin Exam started. Having gone through the headache of trying to form alliances and plan out attacks with other villages in the future, he had no idea how Orochimaru could have set something like that up in time for the Exam if he waited until _after_ it was confirmed that Sasuke had his Sharingan to begin…

The whole mess was so confusing Naruto actually forced himself to pay attention to the sickly ninja who was to be their referee. Whether he was in an alternate reality or simply had managed to mess things up so badly that his memories were now useless, he had to assume that Orochimaru would be showing up for Sasuke sooner or later. Stopping that event was all that mattered.

Naruto returned his attention to Hayate as the chuunin explained to the group of genin that due to the large number of people how had passed the second test – Anko looked rather annoyed at this remark – there would have to be a preliminary round before the third test officially began. This was to make sure that when the Third round was being observed by dignitaries, other ninja, and common villagers it would not drag on for too long.

"So…um… anyone who is not feeling well," he paused to cough and Naruto began to wonder if he wasn't playing up the sickness a bit or if he was planning on including himself in those who didn't feel well enough to continue, "or who feels like quitting after hearing these explanations, please come forward now. We will be starting he preliminary matches immediately…"

"What?" Ino yelled. "Right now?"

Hayate nodded and Naruto shifted his eyes towards Kabuto. The gray haired genin nodded to his teammates, pushed his glasses farther up on his nose…

…and waited patiently for anyone who wanted to quit.

After a moment, Hayate shrugged and lowered his clipboard. "Um… in that case, let's begin the preliminaries. This round will consist of one on one fighting. Basically, you will fight as if in a real life confrontation." He coughed into his hand again and then wiped at his tired eyes and said, "Since we don't have an even number of people, one of you will get lucky and advance without fighting. The rest will participate in one of ten matches with the winner moving on to the third test."

Hayate reached into his pocket and drew out a handful of paper slips. "One of these has a red dot on the end. You will each take one as I come to you," he coughed and glanced towards Neji and Hinata. "If you use any sort of ability that will give you an unfair chance to get the red tab, you will be disqualified."

When they were assembled, the genin had lined up so that the Konoha teams were mostly to the left side of the group and the foreign teams were on the right. Hayate started on the right with a team of Rain-nin and slowly made his way through the group until someone picked winning piece of paper.

He only made it through five people before a winner was found.

"Well, well, well," Kankuro chuckled as he held up the paper with the red dot on the end, "looks like today is my lucky day."

"Kankuro will be given a bye," Hayate said as he walked back toward the front of the room. "The rest of you will have to win your matches to move on. In these fights, there are no rules. You lose if you die, get knocked out, or give up…" he paused and then added, "If you don't want to die, please give up before it gets to that point."

As Hayate continued to explain the rules and the method with which the matches would be chosen, Naruto leaned over and peered down the rows of genin so he could see the team that was on the other side of Gaara's team. He didn't remember them either. There was supposed to be a team from Otogakure in these preliminaries, he was pretty sure of that, but they hadn't made it through for some reason.

He sighed and looked up to the heavens for guidance, but found none on the ceiling. The events in the forest would have been pretty random, he supposed. There had been fewer teams after the first test, so no one would have gotten the same gate as they had in his original timeline. Perhaps the Oto genin had simply run into someone they couldn't handle because of that change… or maybe they weren't supposed to advance in this timeline, or dimension, or whatever it was.

"Good luck, Naruto," Sakura said as she patted him on the shoulder, waking him from his thoughts.

"What?" he looked up at her in confusion.

Sakura smiled and rolled her eyes and then pointed at the electronic scoreboard on the wall.

The scoreboard read: Akimichi Chouji vs. Uzumaki Naruto.

ooo

As the genin and their jounin made their way up the stairs to the viewing balcony, Maito Gai leaned over and whispered to Kakashi, "The Akimichi clan is quite strong. Do you think your student will be able to survive?"

Kakashi didn't reply.

Undeterred, Gai added, "I know you value teamwork above all else, so it shouldn't have surprised me that your team made it through those portions of the Exam, but now it is all about individual skill. His grades were the lowest in his class, weren't they? Have you awakened the fires of his youth yet?"

Kakashi shook his head slightly as if shaking away his thoughts and then turned to Gai. "I'm sorry, what was your question?"

Gai scowled and turned away, quivering with annoyance. Kakashi smiled under his mask while his friend's back was turned.

"Naruto will be more than fine, Gai," he said after letting his 'rival' stew for a moment. "In fact, I really don't think it's fair to Chouji to have to face him. My team will have no problem making it into the next round."

"Pretty confident, aren't we," Asuma said as he joined the two jounin.

Kakashi shrugged. "The Akimichi are all good ninja and I'm sure Chouji will be no exception, but Naruto is… different."

Asuma smiled and lit a cigarette. "We'll see. It's usually hard to get Chouji to do anything other than eat, but he got pretty fired up after I promised him all he can eat steak if he wins…" He took a drag on his cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke. "Naruto would actually be doing me a big favor by beating Chouji; I don't know if I can really afford to treat Chouji to all he can eat."

Kakashi smiled under his mask and nodded as he turned his eyes to the fight that was about to start.

ooo

"Good luck Chouji," Naruto told the larger boy with a smile as Hayate asked if they were ready. The two genin nodded and were told to start.

Naruto waited patiently for Chouji to make the first move, wishing that he could have been the one to pick up the bye. It would have been much better to have been allowed to stay out of the fights this round, but there was no use crying about things that hadn't happened. Still, he felt torn about how to handle this fight. Should he finish Chouji off quickly or drag things out?

If he finished his friend too quickly, he might damage Chouji's self-esteem. Naruto was the deadlast of their class, after all. How would it look if he took a fellow classmate apart in just a few seconds? At the same time, if he left Chouji feeling too good about himself after the fight, would Chouji push himself to get better? Naruto didn't really remember anything about Chouji's fight from when he first went through all of this. Did he learn some lesson that shaped who he was supposed to be? Did he get beaten up in one punch? Did he _win_?

Naruto had no way of knowing. He would just have to wing it and hope it worked out. Chouji had been his friend in the future, a fellow connoisseur of Ichiraku ramen, he didn't want him to look bad here or anywhere else. Perhaps if he just used the fight to…

"You can do it, Fatass!" Ino called out from the balcony.

Naruto cringed at the look on Chouji's face and cursed Ino under his breath. There went and any chance of having a nice friendly match. Was she trying to get him killed?

"Before we start," Chouji said, his eyes and face burning after Ino's comment, "I want to know something. Was that you in the forest when we were fighting that sand guy?"

Naruto opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, Chouji added, "Because if it was, I'll quit right now. That guy would have killed us and you stopped him like it was nothing. There's no way I stand a chance against you."

The reply died in Naruto's mouth as his lips spread into a wide grin. "I have _no_ idea what you're talking about," he lied, as he made his decision about how to handle the fight.

Chouji gave him a suspicious look but then shrugged and brought his hands together. "Ninpou Baika no Jutsu!" His body ballooned out and then he called out, "Nikudan Sensha!"

As the great ball of Chouji began rolling towards him, Naruto felt better than he had in a while. It wouldn't last forever, but while he was here fighting he could forget about all of the troubles that had unexpectedly sprung up since he entered the Forest of Death a few days ago.

ooo

Sakura barely bothered to watch Naruto as he fought with Chouji. She'd seen him in action often enough to be confident that he would have little to no trouble in this fight. It wasn't a knock against Chouji – at least not _too_ much of a knock against him – but unless he'd had an increase in skill rivaling Naruto's, she didn't think he stood much of a chance. He'd been near the middle of the class in terms of skill during their Academy days and had never seemed really excited about training or pushing himself to get better back then. Mostly, if she was remembering right, all he wanted to do was eat and stare at the sky with Shikamaru. Naruto, on the other hand, had always wanted to be better and actually did try to improve even if he generally failed miserably. Now that he had Kakashi to help him, there seemed to be no limits to his potential.

Besides being confident about the outcome, Sakura also had something else on her mind to keep her distracted from watching her teammate. When Hayate had explained there would be a preliminary round to decide who would actually participate in the actual third test, almost all of the genin had acted surprised. She, herself, had been surprised that they weren't all allowed to pass on to the next test despite having completed the second. The word 'preliminary,' however, had reminded her of standing in the forest when Naruto appeared and stopped the fight between Sasuke and Hyuuga Neji. At the time, she hadn't thought anything of it, but he had told Neji he would see him in the preliminaries. Not in the 'next round' or the 'third test' but in the preliminaries.

How had he known about something like that?

"Sensei?" she asked as she stepped closer to Kakashi and the Lee-looking jounin he was standing next to. "Um, how did Naruto know that there was going to be a preliminary round?"

Kakashi pulled his eye away from the fight and gave her as funny a look as he could manage with seventy-five percent of his face covered. "What do you mean?"

"When we were in the forest, Naruto told someone we were fighting that he would see him in the preliminaries… I just don't get how he knew that there would be one."

Kakashi nodded in understanding and his mask and eye shifted in a way that she'd come to associate as him smiling. He reached out and patted her on the shoulder and said, "Having a preliminary round is unusual, but it isn't that uncommon. I actually told him about it the night before the Exam started. He stopped by my apartment and asked if I could tell him about the Exam. That's all."

"Oh," Sakura frowned feeling a little dumb. Of course it would be something obvious like that. It wasn't like Naruto could see into the future or anything!

"Your student seems to be struggling a little bit, Kakashi," the jounin Kakashi was standing with remarked casually, drawing both Sakura and Kakashi's attention back to the fight going on below them.

Sakura looked down just as Naruto leapt out of the way of the rolling ball of flesh. He'd apparently slightly misjudged Chouji's speed because his leg was clipped by the ball, sending him flying at an odd angle. Somehow he managed to right himself in mid air and landed in a crouch as the ball turned and bore down on him once more. This time Naruto choose to roll out of the way and once more only barely escaped being crushed into paste.

"What's he doing?" Sakura asked in shock. The fight had already been going on for almost five minutes. She'd been certain that Naruto would be done by now.

Kakashi didn't answer as he continued to watch. After another two minutes of Naruto dodging with varying degrees of close calls, the jounin's visible face made the smiling motions again and then he looked at his fellow jounin. "Do you see it, Gai?"

Gai nodded as a broad smile split his face. "The fires of youth burn brightly indeed in your young pupil."

Sakura didn't see what they were talking about. It looked suspiciously like Naruto was losing. "What is it?"

Gai looked at her and winked. "Your teammate is making a point."

"A point?"

"His muscles tense a long time before he actually moves," Sasuke said as he stepped closer to her. "He's ready to dodge well before he actually does. He's doing it on purpose."

Kakashi nodded, patting Sasuke on the head and ruffling his hair affectionately. Sasuke did not look amused. "He picked one of Chouji's weaknesses and is trying to show it to him," Kakashi explained, ignoring his dark haired student's scowl.

Sakura wasn't quite sure she understood exactly what they were talking about, but she got her answer soon enough. After nearly ten minutes, Chouji was rolling noticeably slower and Naruto was dodging more easily. Soon the ball came to a complete stop and with a puff of smoke turned back into a human shape. Sweat poured down his face as he stood unsteadily on his feet. Naruto, on the other hand, looked as fresh as he had when they started.

"Y…you're too… too fast," Chouji gasped as he greedily sucked air. "I can't… catch you."

"You got close a couple of times," Naruto told him with a smile, "but I thought you looked like you wouldn't be able to keep it up forever. If you could either roll a bit faster or figure out a way to grab me before you try to flatten me, things might have gone differently."

Chouji nodded weakly and then looked at Hayate. "I… give up," he said and then sat down to catch his breath.

Naruto walked over to the larger boy and offered a hand to help him up while Hayate declared him the winner. Then the two walked up the stairs to their waiting teammates.

It took Sakura a moment to realize that Naruto had just won his fight without even throwing a punch. As the thought dawned on her, Naruto caught her eye and winked as he joined the little group while Chouji made his way to where Asuma and Shikamaru were standing.

"Well, you didn't win," Asuma said with a chuckle as he took a drag on his cigarette, "but you did pretty well. Maybe we can still go get some ste—."

"I want you to help me train," Chouji said quickly. "I don't want to look this bad again…"

Asuma smiled. "I think we can handle th—"

"We can start _after_ we go get steak," Chouji added very seriously.

Asuma chuckled and shook his head. "After steak," he agreed with a sigh.

Naruto watched the little scene with great interest, a smug smile on his face, and then turned to his own teammates.

Sakura returned his smile even as she shook her head. "You just wanted to stay the center of attention for as long as possible, didn't you?"

"Sakura-chan, I have no idea what you're talking about," Naruto replied with an even bigger grin. Then he glanced at Sasuke, who was leaning against the railing, "You better not lose here, Showoff. I want to face you in the next round."

Sasuke smirked. "You'll have to throw a punch when you fight me."

Naruto's grin became positively feral. "We'll see."

Sakura rolled her eyes and then turned to look at the scoreboard as the next match flashed up on the screen:

Hyuuga Neji vs. Tsurugi Misumi

o

o

A/N: Ugh, so much talking in this chapter… Naruto's conversation with the Third wasn't quite as annoying to write as the conversation with Kakashi was in the last chapter! Though I sort of wish there was more space between it and the one with Kakashi, I actually think I liked the way this one turned out… mostly…. I guess practice makes perfect, eh? Another 20 chapters of Naruto telling anyone and everyone about who he is and I should have it down (just to be clear, that won't be happening). Well, hopefully it wasn't too boring going through the whole "no, I really am from the future" conversation again. I promise to have a couple more scenes of young teens trying to kill each other in the next chapter to make up for it… um, is that a good thing?

Wow, another chapter with over a hundred reviews last time. I don't know if I'll ever be satisfied with less from here on out! -- That's a joke, by the way, an addict like me will take anything he can get.

I'll be giving most of the fights in the preliminary round a similar treatment to what Naruto-Chouji received here, a few highlights and that's it. Some will just be basically skipped altogether while something else (like a conversation) is happening. A few dealing with important characters or that I think might be fun to write will have more details, but a lot of them you'll probably be able to guess the winner just based on the opponents. Plus, I think I'd get sick of writing fight scenes if I have to come up with nine in the next few chapters and then several more in the third test. For some obvious reasons that you should have noticed already, most of the matches will be completely different from canon (at least in this round). I think there are only two that were also seen in canon, hopefully that will be acceptable for everyone.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please review and let me know what you thought.

Sexy no Jutsu – I'm sure everyone remembers this one, but this is Naruto's variation on Henge no Jutsu where he turns into a voluptuous young woman in various states of undress.

Baika no Jutsu – "Multi-Size Technique." A jutsu that expands the user's stomach so that he looks something like a ball with a head, arms, and legs, it is generally a precursor to Chouji's "Human Bullet/Meat Tank."

Nikudan Sensha – "Human Meat Tank" or "Human Bullet Tank" depending on what translation you use.


	28. Chapter 27

Chapter 27

o

Most of the genin assembled – as well as the jounin who instructed them and the chuunin who were responsible for testing them – watched the fight between Hyuuga Neji and Tsurugi Misumi with great interest. After all, Hyuuga Neji had been the highest ranked graduate from the previous year's class of genin and was becoming renowned as an exceptional genius even among the clan that seemed to produce several geniuses every generation.

Tsurugi Misumi was less well known, but had had a decent career as a genin thus far. Perhaps his biggest claim to fame was the interesting procedures he'd undergone which had softened his bones to allow him to be even more flexible than he already was with his natural ability to push joints in and out of socket at will and control his limbs with chakra. Few of those watching had had the opportunity to see him in action, but reports indicated that he sometimes seemed to move his arms and legs as if they were made from rubber, effectively bending and twisting around an enemy who got too close.

Even the foreign jounin assembled to watch their teams compete knew that the Hyuuga clan specialized in close range combat; utilizing the vision afforded them by their eyes and their natural giftedness at controlling and manipulating the chakra released from their body. For this reason, Neji would – it was assumed – have to get close to Misumi to be effective against him, but close range was also where Misumi was also most effective. It would be a battle of strength versus strength. Misumi, being a full ten years older than Neji, had the advantage of experience, was about 15 centimeters taller and weighed nearly 20 kilograms more than his opponent, but Neji was supposed to be an unrivaled genius and was a student of the eccentric, but brilliant taijutsu specialist Maito Gai.

Hyuuga Hinata had no doubts about the outcome of the match. She could basically see it already, just by watching Neji step to his spot and wait to be given permission to begin. Even as Misumi began telling Neji that it would be better for him to quit rather than having his ninja career ended at such a young age, she knew the outcome. Neji's cold reply only cemented the inevitability of it in her mind.

Neji was a genius the likes of which she had never seen. He would not lose.

Her feelings on Neji were strange and confusing to her. She knew that what he was rumored to be. The Branch family whispered about him all the time. Among them there was the belief that Neji had the potential to surpass any member of the Main House if only he were given the same training as them. Some members of the Main House had initially scoffed at this idea, but most had been silenced after watching him train when he was younger. The new theory was that due to his deceased father, Hyuuga Hizashi, being the identical twin of the current head of the clan, Hinata's own father, Hyuuga Hiashi, Neji was as close to being a Main House member as one could be and his genetic heritage gifted him with his genius.

Hinata wasn't sure if that was the case – genetics certainly didn't seem to have gifted her with that sort of genius – but it hardly mattered. What she was sure of was the fact that her cousin was probably everything her father wished she would be.

The match began and the two boys moved in on one another. Neji's form was as flawless in motion as it had been when he'd settled into it just before they started. Every step, every thrust of his arms, every twist of his body was… perfect. Hinata lowered her eyes and looked down at her hands as they rested on the metal railing. She knew the truth.

Neji would have been a better heir than her.

Despite better trainers, more in depth instruction on the use and abilities of the Byakugan and the family's Juuken style, and stricter oversight of her progress, Neji had completely and totally surpassed her all on his own.

He knew it too. The dirty looks, the gruff comments to her in passing, the accidental meetings that had often left her near tears and her teammates (well, Kiba, anyway) ready to attack him… they all happened because of Neji knew that she didn't deserve what she'd been born into. And, as if that wasn't bad enough, the two of them also had _that_ incident hanging over their heads.

She didn't really remember it, having only been three years old at the time and unconscious for most of it, but because of her, Neji's father was now dead. She'd been kidnapped in the dead of night by a man named Gashira, a ninja from Kumogakure who happened to also be seated on their village council. From what had been learned later, Kumo (having suffered greatly in a war against Konoha that had just ended) wanted her so they could steal her Byakugan and instill her bloodline abilities in members of their village. There were several ways that this could have been done, but chances were that if all else failed, when she reached the proper age she would simply have been raped over and over so that she passed on her abilities to as many babies as possible before her body gave out and let her mercifully move onto the next life. Hinata did not normally wish death on anyone, but she was glad that her father had killed Gashira and spared her from such a fate.

Hizashi had not been so lucky, however. The death of a member of the village council was enough that Kumo and Konoha nearly found themselves at war again. Kumo could only be satisfied with the body of the man who had killed their council member, Hyuuga Hiashi. The reason for the demand, obviously, was to try to get their hands on a Byakugan despite the failure of their initial plan, but rather than do that, the Hyuuga clan council decided to hand over Neji's father instead. He looked exactly the same as Hiashi, there could be no complaints of duplicity, and he, as a member of the Branch House, had the curse seal on his forehead that would make the Byakugan dormant as soon as he died.

It was a perfect plan, it extinguished the fuse on a powder keg that could have engulfed the village in yet another war, it saved the lives of hundreds of Leaf ninja… but it cost one little boy, only four and a half years old, his father.

Hinata knew Neji hated her. She knew that he hated her father. She knew that he hated the whole Main House.

And she didn't blame him.

She turned her attention back to the match and was surprised to find that Misumi was almost totally wrapped around Neji's upper body. The older Leaf genin's arms and trunk were twisted in a most impossible way, but with his ability to control his dislocated limbs, he had Neji in a position where he had to either give up or have his neck broken.

"Give up now," Misumi demanded.

"Why?" Neji asked, "I've already won."

"If I have to break your neck to show you reality, I will," Misumi growled.

"Try it, if you can."

From the balcony, it was hard to tell if Misumi tried or not, but the widening of his eyes behind his round rim glasses was a pretty big clue that something had gone wrong. His face below his glasses was covered by a hanging cloth mask, but Hinata strongly suspected that his mouth had just fallen open as well.

With a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders, Neji dumped the genin on the floor. "It was unfortunate for you that fate decreed that you'd fight me today," Neji told Misumi. "A person like me, who can stop the flow of chakra inside your body with the slightest touch, was the worst possible opponent for you. You can't control your dislocated limbs if you can't move chakra towards them… plus," he added with a smirking smile, "the weak will always be crushed by the strong." He glanced over at Hayate, who covered his mouth and coughed, "This match is over."

Hayate rubbed underneath his nose and looked down at the oddly shaped man on the ground. "Do you give up?"

Misumi tried to lift his arm, but was unable to with it still dislocated from its normal position. "Yes," he grumbled dejectedly.

Hayate nodded. "The battle cannot be continued. Winner, Neji!"

As a medic-nin came out and helped Misumi back to the infirmary that had been set up in a room just down the hall, Hayate announced that they would be starting the third match. All eyes turned to the scoreboard once more as the names appeared:

Hyuuga Hinata vs. Midari

Hinata swallowed nervously and began heading towards the stairs, trying to smile at the encouragement her teammates whispered to her as she walked past them. Along the way, she passed Neji and shivered at the look he gave her, feeling any confidence gained from the others' encouragement evaporate into nothingness.

In a fight, all by herself, where her teammates couldn't save her… was she doomed? She'd defeated Kin, but that had been because her own ability somewhat cancelled out the Sound genin's. What were the chances of her getting that lucky a second time? She could feel her hands shaking and reached up to touch her lip to give them something to do.

Just before the stairs, Naruto had turned and was smiling at her.

"Don't be nervous," he said softly, his hand gently closing around her arm to stop her hand from its habitual motion and – though he didn't know it – solidifying the ground beneath her so her body had a chance to steady itself. "You can do it. Pretend it's just you and me practicing in the morning and kick his ass. You can beat this guy in your sleep, just believe in yourself."

Hinata was doing her best not to throw up on him – which would have been a really unfortunate way to pay him back for his kindness – so she nodded weakly instead of tempting fate by opening her mouth to thank him for the encouragement. His words _did_ help, however, and she felt some of her calm return as her stomach ceased from clenching and the threat of being sick died down slightly. Then, feeling slightly better, she headed down the stairs to where Hayate and Midari where waiting for her.

Midari was a member of a genin team from Amegakure. Hinata wasn't sure if that was why he was dressed so odd or not, but it seemed likely. He was wearing a full body suit that was black and a sort of bluish-gray. There was a strange tube that came out of the outfit roughly above his heart and wrapped around to a pouch behind him. His eyes were hidden behind some sort of strange black glasses with blue-green lenses that stuck out from either side of his bodysuit, but didn't connect in the middle, leaving his nose completely exposed. The glasses actually fit so tightly that they almost looked more like face paint, save for the colored lenses. He didn't wear a traditional hitai-ate, as most genin did, but instead had his village's symbol attached to the brown conical hat he wore.

Hinata tried running through what she knew of Amegakure in an effort to come up with some insights on what to expect, but she didn't get much and then Hayate told them to start and it was too late to worry about it.

ooo

Gaara didn't care about these fights. He knew he was easily more powerful than almost anyone in the room (and had the power within him to take the 'almost' out of that sentence if he wanted to). Most of them were worthless in his eyes; others would have held his attention more if it weren't for Uzumaki Naruto's presence. He'd been watching Naruto ever since Hayate had told the genin teams that the preliminary matches were going to start.

Though he hated to admit it, Naruto fascinated him.

He'd been so casual in his fight against that fatass from Konoha as he intentionally (it appeared) kept the fight close while wearing the other boy down. Then he'd helped his opponent up and the two had actually smiled at each other as they walked back towards the people they associated with. After that, Naruto had talked with his teammates while they watched the next match. The pink haired kunoichi, Sakura, laughed occasionally at his jokes and even touched his arm during their conversation. There was such familiarity and… affection… between the two of them. And Uchiha Sasuke was almost the same (though with less touching).

Gaara had seen friendship from afar. He'd watched as kids in his village played and talked and helped each other run in fear from him. For a time, he'd even thought he wanted it for himself, though he'd quickly learned that there were better, more important, things in life. Seeing Naruto surrounded by it, however, was different. It made Gaara feel differently about the idea of friendship.

After all, he and Naruto were the same. The blond hadn't said the actual words, but he'd been open enough in his hints that Gaara had no doubts about it. Uzumaki Naruto had something sealed within him as well. He was a monster, just like Gaara.

So why weren't these people running away from him? Why didn't they keep their distance, occasionally casting wary glances out of the corner of their eyes at him the way Gaara's own siblings were doing now?

The action below him momentarily drew his attention away from these questions as the Hyuuga kunoichi dodged a strange water jutsu that had senbons hidden within it and gradually moved in on her opponent. Gaara frowned at the way the girl was moving. She'd been so afraid only a minute or two ago he'd practically been able to smell the stink of it rolling off of her. Now she was moving with far more confidence than he'd have thought she would be capable of (though still far less than Neji had during his fight). When had that changed?

Three quick strikes later, Midari's arm hung useless at his side and the match was essentially over. Gaara went back to ignoring it and watching Naruto who was smiling and cheering like an idiot.

A peculiar feeling settled over Gaara as he realized the answer to his last question. The Hyuuga kunoichi had stopped and spoken to Naruto. _That_ was when the change happened. No, that wasn't even quite right. She hadn't stopped and talked to Naruto, he had _stopped_ her. He'd stepped away from his teammates and said something to the girl to take away her fear.

But why?

He had no answer to this question. She was obviously weaker than Naruto, so she couldn't do anything for him. The Hyuuga were known as a powerful clan, but certainly someone who became so afraid right before a simple one-on-one fight couldn't be too highly placed within the clan. And even if she was, Naruto didn't _have_ to say whatever he'd said to help her. There could be benefits to aiding her, but certainly no repercussion for not. Plus, he had been acting that way with most of the genin around him, not just her.

The blond's bright blue eyes suddenly met Gaara's and the other boy winked and grinned knowingly. Then he nodded his head to the side.

Gaara's glanced at the scoreboard:

Akado Yoroi vs. Gaara

The red head scowled as his green eyes shifted to the level below him where his opponent was already waiting. In a swirl of sand he vanished from the spot he'd been standing and reappeared in front of Yoroi, his arms folded and his face blank save for the usual coldness in his eyes.

The taller genin looked down at Gaara, his face appearing impassive with his eyes hidden behind round, dark glasses and the lower half of his face behind a hanging cloth mask. "Thanks for joining us."

Gaara stared up at him without replying.

"Okay," Hayate told them with a cough as he stepped back, "please begin."

Yoroi right hand seemed to glow as his left reached into the pouch he wore on his back hip.

Gaara didn't move.

The Leaf genin removed a handful of shuriken from the pouch and prepared to throw them.

Gaara didn't move.

The shuriken cut through the air with impressive speed and accuracy, heading straight for Gaara's face.

Gaara still didn't move, but the sand from his gourd sprang into action. It swirled out of the top of the gourd over his left shoulder, down behind him, and then back up passing his right hip and continuing on until it swept the weapons away before they reached his face. Gaara almost smile. He hadn't even lifted a finger, but the sand had completely taken away his enemy's option of using ranged weapons against him.

Yoroi's eyebrows rose up in surprise and Gaara wished that the man's face wasn't quite so hidden. He always enjoyed watching the shock and, eventually, fear appear on the faces of those he was about to crush. There was a certain rush that came with seeing those emotions that was hard to describe, but it always left him feeling energized. The fact that the man's dark clothing and glasses were denying him that rush annoyed him.

"That's an impressive ability you have there," Yoroi said in the sort of calm voice that one uses when commenting on the weather. "I wish I could have fought you during the actual third test. Beating you where everyone could see would have made quite a name for me."

"Pft," Gaara replied, "you can't beat me. You'll be lucky if you ever even walk again by the time I'm done with you."

"You're a cocky little son of a bitch, aren't you?"

The sand around Gaara danced and swirled agitatedly as his eyes hardened. "My mother is no bitch," he growled, "but I might introduce you to her. She'll enjoy drinking your blood!"

The sand shot forward and slammed into Yoroi's chest, knocking him backwards and then began swirling around him. The older genin brought his hands up to protect himself, but Gaara knew it was a useless gesture. He'd already decided that he was going to kill this man unless he was ordered to stop… and maybe even that wouldn't prevent him from doing it.

Yoroi's movements were not, however, the useless gesture that Gaara had initially thought they were. The sand that he touched with his hands suddenly fell to the ground, no longer under Gaara's direct control. A simple thought brought the rest back to him, as a frown appeared on his face.

"An impressive power, but not an unbeatable one," Yoroi said with what must have been a smile behind his mask. "Even an ability like yours all boils down to using chakra to manipulate an object, but I can absorb chakra."

Gaara looked at the sand on the ground next to Yoroi and then at the man's hands.

"I hope you have another trick up your sleeves," Yoroi went on, "because other wise this isn't going to be nearly as exciting a fight as I thought it would be."

"You talk too much," Gaara told him.

Yoroi brought his hands together and began to form seals: Boar, Dog, Bird, Monkey, Ram. For a moment, it almost seemed to Gaara as though nothing had happened, but then the ground began to glow an orangish red color and he felt heat above his head. He glanced up to find a large ball of fire hanging menacingly from the ceiling, ready to drop on him at any moment. The skin on his neck and arms felt like it was getting ready to blister as the heat increased, it was like standing in the desert around his village on the hottest day of the year and just letting the sun beat down upon you. He'd done that plenty of times, but he'd never felt the unnatural fear that was trying to build up inside of him at this moment.

Gaara returned his attention to the Leaf genin in front of him.

"You're about to die," Yoroi said, "I suggest you give up before I burn your skin right off your bones."

Gaara's eyes returned to the sand at Yoroi's feet and at the sand that had been slowly inching towards it from his remaining supply. The two met and then the sand around Yoroi's feet sprang up around his ankles. The Leaf genin looked down in surprise and reached down to grab at it, but more sand – this time from the cloud that had been lazily circling Gaara – struck him in the face and pulled him back to an upright position. Yoroi's hand began moving towards the sand around his face, but before he could complete the motion, more sand caught him by the upper bicep and shoulder, where his shirt covered his skin, pulling his arms back and away until they were no longer able to cause trouble.

Yoroi was wearing fingerless gloves, so Gaara assumed that his ability required his skin to come in contact with whatever he was absorbing chakra from. Whether that meant that any of his skin was capable of the fear or only the skin of his hands, was hard to say, but it no longer mattered. The sand was only attacking areas that were covered by clothing, regardless of how the ability worked, Gaara had neutralized it.

The fight was over and everyone knew it, including Yoroi. "I give up!" the genin yelled.

Gaara ignored his surrender and the sand bent the genin's arms back farther and farther. A second later, there was a loud snap as the bones in Yoroi's shoulder shattered and each arm was pushed all the behind him at unnatural angles. The Leaf genin screamed in pain.

Gaara smiled and the sand swirled tighter around his prey.

"Yoroi has given up, this match is over," Hayate announced with a cough.

The sand continued to move around the other genin.

"I said, it's over," Hayate repeated, the lazy and slightly sickliness of his voice vanished in an instant, replaced by an unspoken threat.

Gaara didn't care. A wave of sand rose up and prepared to crash down on the broken genin, but before it could, a purple blur flashed through the spot where Yoroi was pinned. The sand slammed into the ground a half-second later and then rose back up and swirled into Gaara's gourd, drawing in the cork as the last of it vanished.

He turned and looked at the person who had denied him his kill. The bespectacled genin with the grey ponytail was still kneeling over his teammate, his hands glowing green as they ran along the man's arms while the genin slowly eased them into their proper places. When the medic-nin arrived with a stretcher, the grey haired genin helped get his teammate onto it as gently as possible.

"I'm sorry, Yoroi-kun," he said as he stepped back, "I should have stepped in sooner."

Yoroi's brows knitted, but he didn't have a chance to reply before the healers rushed him back to the infirmary.

As the double doors closed behind them, the genin glanced back over his shoulder and pushed his glasses farther up on his nose as he glared coldly at Gaara. "You'd already won; there was no reason to do that."

Gaara stared at the Leaf-nin for a moment and then shrugged and headed for the stairs. As he started up them, the grey haired genin called out, "You'd better hope we don't meet in the next round."

Gaara paused and then, without turning, said, "I don't care if we do or don't. Right now there's only one person I'm interested in."

Coincidentally, the very person he was interested in was standing at the top of the stairs when he got there. Naruto, however, barely seemed to even notice Gaara as they passed each other. Instead, his troubled eyes were locked onto the genin who had stopped the fight.

Gaara had faced Naruto twice already and both times the blond's attention had been totally locked on him, even when there were other potential enemies around. That was the way people typically were around him (especially in Suna where he'd killed plenty of people just for fun) and he enjoyed it. If they were warily paying attention to him, they couldn't ignore him or pretend he didn't exist. To suddenly be disregarded by the person _his_ attention was mostly focused towards was strangely unpleasant… and a little annoying.

He glared at Naruto as they passed each other, but the blond's eyes never wavered from the gray haired leaf genin now approaching the steps himself.

ooo

Naruto barely saw Gaara as they passed each other and the killer intent rolling off the red head passed through him like wind through a net. Some part of him recognized the threat and readied itself to force his attention onto his future friend should the need arise, but all of his conscious thoughts were directed at Kabuto.

The genin Naruto had assumed would be a traitor was acting far different from how he should. Naruto barely even remembered Kabuto's two teammates, but he was certain that Kabuto had never paid that much attention to an unimportant ally. The concern on his face as he tried to heal his teammate's injuries and then helped lift him onto the stretcher was completely foreign on his face. Kabuto was supposed to be calculating. He was supposed to be aloof. He was supposed to be…

Naruto sighed and tried to push his assumptions aside. This Kabuto was obviously totally different than the one he remembered from his own past. Given that he should have been a spy for Orochimaru even before Naruto had woken in the past, there was no way any of his actions had caused this change.

What that meant, however, was a matter that he'd have to deal with later.

Kabuto's intelligent eyes locked onto Naruto as he ascended the stairs and a small smile appeared on his lips. "He'll be okay, Naruto-kun. The damage is extensive, but I don't think it is life threatening or anything. I fear that I'll be without at least one teammate for a while, however."

Naruto nodded. "That's… uh… good… that'll he'll be okay, I mean."

The older genin reached the top of the stairs and his smile slowly disappeared as a more serious expression appeared on his face. "I've been meaning to apologize to you for my actions before the Exam started," he said, fiddling with his hands nervously before stuffing them into his pockets. "You all looked so small and helpless… I should not have demeaned you by insinuating that you needed my help. Obviously I was quite mistaken about your abilities. All nine of you rookies passed the first two tests while one hundred and thirty-two older, more experienced genin failed. I suppose I should have been asking _you_ for help."

The apology caught Naruto almost as off guard as Kabuto's actions only moments before. This was another thing that he never would have believed the traitor he knew in the future to be capable of… unless it was all part of some scheme that Naruto wasn't seeing yet.

"Um, yeah," Naruto replied as he decided that he would play along either to keep Kabuto from knowing that Naruto found his behavior so odd or to keep from being an ass to someone who didn't deserve it – he wasn't sure which. "Don't worry about it… we probably did look like a bunch of little kids to you. Sorry I was so rude; I don't like being looked down on."

Kabuto smiled warmly. "With skill like yours, I doubt you'll ever be looked down on again."

The two of them chuckled lightly and then Kabuto excused himself while Naruto returned to his teammates as the next match was announced.

"Did you apologize to Kabuto-san?" Sakura asked as Shikamaru and Tenten prepared to fight.

Naruto nodded grudgingly. "He might not be as bad of a guy as I thought he was," he admitted, not totally sure if he was lying or not.

"Sometimes it's hard to believe that people occasionally do things just to be nice, isn't it?" Sakura asked as Shikamaru dove away from an assortment of flying projectiles.

"People usually don't," Sasuke pointed out while keeping his eyes on the fight below.

"Plenty of people do things just to be nice!" Sakura retorted.

"No they don't," Sasuke replied, wincing slightly as a kunai caught Shikamaru in the thigh, "at best they do _nice_ things to feel good about themselves, but most aren't even that altruistic." Tenten was moving in to seal her victory now, a mace in her hands.

"Wow, she's really strong," Sakura commented, wanting to change the subject away from one that she and Sasuke clearly disagreed on.

"It's over," Naruto said.

"Yeah, Shikamaru put up a good fight, but sh—"

"No, Shikamaru's already beaten her," Naruto cut her off.

"What do you mean…" Sakura's question drifted off as Shikamaru stood up, his shadow suddenly connected to Tenten's and his hands in a position as if he were holding the mace. Shikamaru raised his hand in the air while Tenten informed him that he couldn't make her give up even if he could control her body, and then he swung his hand down towards the top of his head, stopping less than two centimeters before he hit himself. With an empty hand, the action did nothing to him, but the handle of the mace in Tenten's hand cracked against her skull. She was unconscious before she hit the ground.

Shikamaru smiled as he was announced as the winner and then reached down and pulled the kunai from his leg. "Damn, that was more troublesome than I thought it would be," he grumbled as he waved off the medic-nin and walked with only a slight limp towards the stairs.

"How did you know?" Sakura asked Naruto as Tenten was carried back to the infirmary.

Naruto shrugged. "Just paying attention. Shikamaru's pretty smart, I didn't think he'd let himself look that bad against her. He was probably luring her into for that one moment since the fight began. I bet he had another dozen ways already planned out in case she didn't do what he expected her to."

"Che," Shikamaru said as he passed them, "two dozen, but most of them wouldn't have worked. If she didn't fall for it there, I would have had to get hurt again to lure her in like that and I don't think I could have taken much more." Then he continued on towards his own team.

Naruto smiled. "See? Even though he acts like a lazy bum, he's smart."

"You two are a lot alike, then," Sasuke said with a smirk. "He looks like a lazy dumbass, but is actually pretty smart; you look like a weak dumbass, but are actually pretty strong."

Naruto didn't miss that Sasuke had still left him with the label of dumbass, but his retort was cut off by the names that flashed up on the scoreboard.

Haruno Sakura vs. Baiu

"Good luck," Sasuke said as Sakura took a deep, calming breath and then headed down the stairs. When she was out of earshot, he turned to Naruto and whispered, "How do you think she'll do?"

Naruto didn't take his eyes off of her as she walked to where Hayate was standing and waited for her opponent to reach them. "You train with her more than I do, what do you think?"

Sasuke licked his lips and stared at Sakura for a moment. "She's going to kick his ass."

Naruto grinned. "Yeah she will."

ooo

Sakura felt strangely calm as she prepared for her match against the dumpy looking Baiu. She knew she'd done all she could to get ready for this moment; she'd been doing extra training with Sasuke and Naruto for the past few weeks, she'd been working hard when Kakashi instructed them after their missions, and she was anxious to prove herself.

She was well aware of the fact that each time her team had run into some sort of trouble she'd done the least out of all of them. Against Kakashi that first day she'd run around looking for Sasuke, passed out after her sensei used genjutsu on her, and then got tied to the stump for her failure. When they went to Kogane she was the one who stood with the wagons during the initial bandit attack while Naruto, Sasuke, and Kakashi actually dealt with the threat. Then, against the missing-nin, she was injured almost before the fighting even started and could only really watch as Sasuke and Naruto fought their opponents – though she had been a somewhat useful distraction against Sayaka. And last, but certainly not least, when Sasuke fought Neji she had simply stood there with her foot pinned to the ground by Tenten's incredibly accurate kunai throws.

This time there wouldn't be a Naruto or Sasuke to save her or fight for her or protect her. She was on her own, with her teammates watching and cheering (well, Naruto was anyway) from the sidelines. For once, they weren't standing between her and the danger.

She watched her opponent carefully as Baiu slowly made his way towards her. He was dressed almost identical to his teammate, Midari, whom Hinata had faced, only Baiu was shorter and a bit rounder. If she'd had to guess, she would have thought him the youngest on his team as he almost looked like he still had some baby fat, but with all but his face hidden behind his clothing, it was hard to be sure.

Baiu placed his closed right fist into his left palm and bowed slightly. "Let's do our best," he told her as Hayate stepped back so the two could fight.

Sakura smiled at the young man and bowed as well. "Yes, let's hav—"

Before she could finish, something sliced into arm and shoulder. Instincts took over and she dove to the side as three more senbon passed through the air where she'd just been standing. Sakura rolled smoothly to her feet and turned her wide eyes upon her opponent as she dimly heard Naruto yelling out an obnoxious protest to the slightly underhanded attack. Baiu already had another set of senbon in his hand and a cocky grin on his face.

"You shouldn't take your eyes off of your opponent," he told her calmly, "even one who looks like a cute little kid. I've been a ninja for almost ten years now and have killed plenty of people. If you die today, I doubt I'll remember what you looked like in another week. You'll just be another kill added to my name."

Sakura drew a kunai and grinned despite the sudden swell of nervousness in her chest. "I'll make sure you remember me in a week," she told him.

Baiu's reply came in the form of another round of senbon, though this time he charged as she twisted to the side to dodge them. Sakura brought her kunai up to block as Baiu drew one of the umbrellas strapped to his back and attacked with it like it was a sword. The weight of the umbrella was surprising as was the strength behind the swing. Baiu, despite his short stature and slightly chubby appearance, was definitely _not_ a cute little kid.

The force of the blow was enough to knock Sakura off her feet and send her flying. She landed hard on her back, but rolled with the landing and pushed off the ground onto her feet.

Baiu was no longer in front of her. Instead, he was in the air, his umbrella pulled way back as if he were getting ready to throw it at her. The umbrella opened as it was thrust forward and spun it in his hand. Sakura's eyes widened in fear at sight of the cloud of senbon shooting out of the opened umbrella and raining down upon her.

"Sakura-chan!" Naruto's voice called out as she tried to get out of the impact zone.

From the balcony, it was hard for the genin to see just what had happened as the storm of needles slammed into the ground. Sakura had dove in the opposite direction, so the attack had obscured their view of the outcome, but when it was all over, Sakura was lying on the ground with at least ten needles in her back and legs.

Hayate started to raise his hand, but before he could declare a winner, Sakura slowly pushed herself up to her feet.

"Don't stop it," she whispered hoarsely as she wiped blood from her brow. "I'm not done yet."

"Are you sure?" Hayate asked.

In answer, Sakura dropped her kunai and brought her fingers together. "Doton: Doryou Kabe!" The ground in front of her seemed to almost explode as a wall of earth almost three meters tall and at least five meters wide rose up in front of her, breaking the stone tiles that made up the floor and completely blocking her from Baiu's sight.

Those watching the fight, however, could see her instantly drop to her knees as she tried, unsuccessfully, to reach behind her and remove the senbon that were stuck in her back. Once she realized it was futile, she pulled the ones she could reach out of her leg and then slumped against the wall as her eyes began to close.

Baiu was a cautious person. He didn't try jumping over the wall, nor did he just run quickly around it to see what she was doing. Instead, he slowly circled the outer edge of the room until he could see Sakura, keeping plenty of distance between himself and where he thought she was so that he would have time to dodge any attack she was preparing for him.

When he finally was able to see her, however, he found that she appeared to have blacked, probably from chakra exhaustion after taking such extensive damage and then creating the wall of earth. Whatever the reason, she was slumped against the wall, her hands folded in her lap and a small pool of blood beginning to form underneath her.

Baiu didn't run to her or proclaim his victory, but he did slowly walk towards her limp form, senbon at the ready should she try anything tricky.

"Excuse me, referee-san, but you might want to call the match before she really dies," Baiu said as he looked up at the chuunin once he was certain that Sakura wasn't going to move again. "Or should I finish her now and make it a little more obvious that she's done?"

Hayate glanced at Sakura, shrugged…

…and then took a step back.

Baiu frowned and then looked back down. Sakura's eyes were open and her fingers were forming seals. "Magen: Tendoumi no Jutsu!"

To Baiu it seemed as though Sakura, the wall of earth, Hayate, and just about everything else had faded away in a swirl of leaves. Instead, he found himself surrounded by beautiful, scantily clad women as the normal lighting of the tournament room changed into a smoky haze with soft colors bouncing off of it. The women smiled welcomingly and waved him towards them.

"Baiu-sama, come sit with us," they called out in giggling voices as one of them began sauntering towards him. "We've been waiting _so_ long for you to come see us…"

The Rain genin took a step forward, a dopey smile on his face, but then shook his head. Why would these women be here? He was supposed to be in the middle of a fight. Besides that, no woman had ever looked at him with _that_ look in her eyes, much less a half-dozen of them. This was the stupid, desperate jutsu of a young, inexperienced genin.

He brought his hands together. "Release!"

The girls and lighting fell away, but before the illusion was totally gone, the girl who had been approaching him brought her hands together and called out, "Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu!"

The women who had been fading away, suddenly came back into sharp focus, though this time they were far from beautiful. Rolling blobs of skin oozed off their faces and splashed on the ground, revealing red stained bone and tissue below. Their boney fingers stretched towards him and their no longer giggling voices rasped, "Come to us, Baiu-sama. We've been waiting for you… we're so _hungry_!"

Baiu couldn't help it. He screamed and tried to back away, but his feet wouldn't move. Looking down he found that the ground had become blood-red goo that his feet were slowly sinking into. The closest of the corpse-like women was nearly upon him and he could do nothing to escape.

Again he shook his head, clearing the unnatural fear from his mind. This was just another genjutsu the girl was using on him. There was no way something like this could actually be happening. His senses all claimed that what he was seeing was real and the terror was enough that he wanted to curl up in a little ball and cry, but that wasn't him and this wasn't real.

"You can't fool me!" he yelled out as the goo tried to swallow him up. "Release!" Once more, the illusion fell away, leaving only Sakura in front of him. The only problem was Sakura was now _right_ in front of him.

The kunoichi's hand curled into a fist as she cocked her arm and then drove it into her opponent's squat face.

Baiu was almost certainly unconscious before he hit the wall, but even if he wasn't, the impact with the wall certainly would have been enough to do the trick. The wooden panels that covered the concrete walls to give them a more aesthetically pleasing appearance shattered under the force of the impact and even the wall itself had cracked by the time Baiu fell forward and did not rise or even move.

Sakura stood with her arm still extended from her follow through for several seconds, panting with exertion and trying to remain conscious herself as Hayate stepped forward.

"Winner, Haruno Sakura!"

Her friends cheered wildly… or Naruto did anyway. Maybe the others too, it was hard to hear anyone over Naruto, but it didn't matter. Looking up, she could see their faces and knew that she had done what she needed to. She'd proven that she wasn't just that _other_ member of Team Seven that no one really paid attention to because she was so far behind everyone else. For the moment, anyway, she was in front of them and they all could see her.

That was enough… for now.

Her head fell forward and her body followed as the darkness swooped up around her. She didn't hit the ground, however, as two strong, warm arms closed around her body and held her close. She looked up through closing eyelids and found Sasuke's face with Naruto hovering just behind him.

"Thanks," she whispered.

"Anytime," he replied with what almost looked like a smile.

Her eyes shifted to Naruto, noted his proud, but worried smile and then closed. It wasn't the best ending to a fight she could have imagined – staying conscious would have been nice – but having her friends right there with her, looking proud, and Sasuke's arms around her… well, it was good enough.

ooo

Sasuke lifted Sakura easily and carried her over to the medic-nin who had a stretcher ready for her. After gently setting her down, careful to lay her face down so that the senbon in her back would not be touched or pressed upon by the canvas stretcher, he turned and headed up the stairs; Naruto trailing just behind him.

Sakura had been pretty amazing, he had to admit. Compared to the girl who used to follow him around just trying to get close enough to _accidentally_ touch him, she was a totally different person. The strength of will alone to get up after being hit with as many senbon as she had been was incredible. She'd come so far in such a short amount of time.

"She'll be alright," Naruto said softly as he laid a hand on Sasuke's shoulder.

Sasuke glanced at his friend and nodded. He didn't have any doubt that Sakura would recover quickly.

Looking at Naruto, however, he was again struck by the difference that had come over the blond in the past month or two. The stupid jokes and thick-headedness were still there, but they were almost more of a mask now. Of course, he knew that they were completely real and just simply a part of Naruto's personality, but they hid the powerful ninja that his friend had become. In fact, Sasuke wasn't always totally sure that even he knew how strong Naruto was. Even if he really was just as strong as Sasuke had seen so far, he was about a million times better than he'd been when they graduated… maybe more.

Both Sakura and Naruto had come so far since they became a team, and he… he had not. They grew more and more powerful every time he saw them, but his progression was far slower. He'd made some strides, of course, but not to the extent that his teammates had. It would be easy to argue that they'd had much farther to go than he did when they graduated, but that was the sort of excuse that only a weakling would make.

There was no excuse for not continuing to remain as far above them as the clouds were above the ground.

When the preliminaries were over, he was going to make some changes. He had to get stronger if he was ever going to catch his brother. He had to get stronger if he was going to continue to remain above Naruto.

He had to get stronger if he was going to continue to have a reason to live.

"What do you think she made him see with that genjutsu?" Naruto asked as they reached Kakashi and stopped. "He looked pretty… er, _excited_, don't you think?"

"Who cares?" Sasuke asked.

Naruto leaned a little closer to him. "Do you think it was something…" he put a hand over his mouth and – rather loudly – whispered, "…_naughty_?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes and refused to answer though he felt his cheeks warm slightly.

Naruto grinned. "I bet she'd show it to you the next time you two go off and train…"

"That would be a stupid waste of time," Sasuke growled.

Naruto shrugged. "Maybe she'll show me and I could tell you about it."

"Is there anything I can do to get you to stop talking about this?" Sasuke asked resignedly.

"Just admit that you want to see if Sakura-chan is really a pervert or not."

"I don't."

"Liar."

"Dumbass."

Naruto chuckled and then kindly changed the subject rather than continuing the insult trading. "So," he said casually as they looked up at the scoreboard to see who the next two fighters would be, "Sakura-chan and I made it into the third test… you aren't feeling any pressure, are you, Showoff? I mean, it'll look pretty bad if the worst student the Academy has ever let graduate and a girl from a non-ninja family pass and the great Uchiha genius has to watch from the stands."

Sasuke glared at his teammate, but his lips twisted into a half smile-half smirk. "You just better hope you lose before we meet in the next round. It will be a lot more humiliating for you to lose in front of all those people than it is when you lose during our sparing sessions. At least then, it's just Sakura and Kakashi who laugh at you; imagine if the whole village got to laugh."

Naruto grinned. "I prefer to think of looking up at their shocked faces when they see all the geniuses whose asses I've just kicked. Between you, the Kazekage's son, and Neji… I might get to fight a 'genius' every round!"

"Or you might not get to fight any of them until we meet in the finals," Sasuke pointed out.

Naruto's grin grew larger. "I can live with that."

Sasuke's half smile became a full one. "Me too."

Both boys looked up as the scoreboard flashed the next two names:

Aburame Shino vs. Rock Lee.

"Hmm, bad luck," Naruto sighed, "I was almost hoping to see what you could do in a rematch against Lee."

Sasuke unconsciously rubbed his no longer injured shoulder. "Me too."

o

o

A/N: Sorry that this chapter is shorter than they've been lately (only 8,150 words this time, one of the shortest in the story so far). To be honest, I had trouble making it even this long. Life seemed to keep getting in the way (didn't finish until just today, so error checking might not be as thorough as usual) and when I did have the time to write, I had trouble really getting into it. The preliminaries just aren't all that important in this story – other than them happening so we can move on. Sakura and Ino were already friends, Hinata wasn't fighting Neji and was already changing, and Gaara is just waiting around to face Naruto at some point… not a lot else happened during the canon primaries. I think there are a total of three things that I really wanted to happen in here and we've already gotten through two of them (mostly). Kabuto's stuff was important and showing Sakura fighting on her own was – kind of – important. The other event doesn't happen until towards the end of the preliminaries, and I couldn't get there in one chapter.

For anyone curious, and I'm sure there are just _tons_ of you out there. Sakura was actually correct in her assessment of Baiu as the youngest member of his team. Though all three are apparently 19 years old, Baiu was born on May 30th, while Midari was born on May 7th and Shigure (whom Gaara crushes first in canon) was born on February 11th. This and the geography question from the Wave Country arc will be on the test, so don't forget it… ;)

Anyway, thank you for all of the wonderful reviews. I try to respond to as many as possible, but it's getting harder and harder to do so. Still, I definitely read them all and greatly enjoy hearing what you like or dislike or whatever.

Magen: Jigoku Kouka no Jutsu – "Demonic Illusion: Descending Hell Technique" Though not specifically named, this is the jutsu that Yoroi is using against Gaara when the ball of fire appears on the ceiling. It's a genjutsu that creates the illusion of a ball of fire in the air which then crashes to the ground and makes everyone run away. Yoroi used it during on of the filler episodes (during the mission dealing with Anko's past).

Doton: Doryou Kabe – "Earth Release: Earth Flow Wall" (I'm pretty sure, anyway). Smaller version of the "Doton: Doryou Jouheki" Yamato uses to create an enormous cliff during Naruto's elemental training. 'Jouheki' means 'rampart,' 'Kabe' means 'wall'… so the grammar should be right, unless there's a rule that I don't know about.

Magen: Tendoumi no Jutsu – "Demonic Illusion: Heaven Viewing Technique." This one I'm less sure on. It's Kakashi's "Demonic Illusion: Hell Viewing" genjutsu, only the word for 'hell' – Naraku – has been replaced with 'Tendou' which, I believe, is 'heaven or paradise'… at least that's what it is according to my little Japanese-English online dictionary. My problem here is that I don't know that the 'mi' at the end of the 'Narakumi' in the original jutsu should still be there with the new noun… well, close enough, I suppose. If anyone happens to know Japanese and knows the proper way (if I'm wrong) of saying "Heaven viewing" let me know and I'll gladly change it.

Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu – "Demonic Illusion: Hell Viewing Technique." As said above, this is one of Kakashi's genjutsu. He uses it on Sakura during the bell test to make her see a dying Sasuke. Basically, it just makes the enemy see terrifying images.


	29. Chapter 28

Chapter 28

o

_'Damn they're good,'_ Naruto thought with a happy smile as he watched the battle playing out below. It was really too bad that the two of them had drawn each other since they were both the sorts who deserved to be able to showcase their skills in front of an appreciative audience. In the future they'd been great, but he'd forgotten just how skilled they were when they were kids.

Shino's kikaichu bugs had almost ended things early, but Lee was both literally and figuratively quick on his feet. He grasped the danger he was in and began moving at speeds that kept Shino's insect allies from doing what they did best. Naruto doubted any other genin (with the possible exception of himself) could have gotten around the bugs with just pure speed and kept it up for as long as Lee had so far. A number of them could reach those speeds for brief moments, but few had the stamina necessary to keep it up.

Unfortunately for Lee, he couldn't attack Shino very well while dodging the swarm of insects. In fact, even when he did manage to get close enough with time to slow down and punch or kick, Shino was able to block most of his attacks. Shino didn't often show it off, but he wasn't such a terrible taijutsu user himself and what he lacked in skill he made up for in quick thinking and good reaction time.

During a small lull in the fight (which meant Lee was only dodging the ever persistent kikaichu bugs while looking for a new avenue of attack) Sasuke commented on Lee only using taijutsu rather than simply stepping back and using a ninjutsu to attack the insects he seemed to be having trouble with. Naruto almost answered, but Gai spoke up first. The blond actually was grateful for the energetic jounin's interruption since – when he stopped and thought about it – he couldn't think of a good excuse for knowing Lee's history and Sasuke would definitely be curious about the source of such information.

"Lee has close to zero ability to use ninjutsu, Sasuke-kun," Gai informed the Uchiha, "and even less for genjutsu. His tenketsu are only partially developed so that he is almost completely unable to expel or mold chakra."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed as he continued to follow Lee's movements below. Naruto did his best to hide his smile as he watched the gears in his friend's head turning. He knew Sasuke hadn't forgotten his defeat at Lee's hands and now he was finding out that Lee would have been considered even below Naruto back at the Academy… it was probably a pretty bitter pill to swallow, but sooner or later he'd see that there was no shame in being beaten by Lee.

"So, with those two avenues closed to him, he had the choice of either giving up his dream of becoming a ninja or… become a taijutsu specialist!" Gai's face lit up as he called out, "Lee! Take them off!"

The dark haired boy swatted his hand at some bugs that got too close and then threw himself into a high arcing flip, landing on almost the complete opposite side of the room. He made sure to check that Shino and the swarm of insects weren't any closer to him and then glanced up at the balcony. "But… Gai-sensei, you said that was only to be used when I was protecting many precious people!"

Though it hardly seemed possible, Gai's toothy smile actually grew larger as he gave a bug thumbs up and winked: the classic 'nice guy pose.' "It's okay! I'll allow it this once!"

Naruto understood almost instantly what was happening. Gai wasn't worried about Lee beating Shino, though this would definitely help end the match much quicker. He wanted his pupil to show a genius (or two, since he probably wanted Kakashi to see his student's prowess as well) what it meant to be a genius of hard work.

Lee almost did a little dance as he sat down and pulled off the orange leg warmer that covered the weights strapped to his right leg. Each weight pack was marked with the kanji for 'Guts,' something Naruto had always found to be the perfect description of his friend.

The first set of weights had just come off when Shino attacked.

Naruto once again had to be impressed with Shino's logic and ruthless efficiency. His opponent was on the ground, unguarded, and doing something that would probably give him an advantage when he was done. It was the perfect and – especially if Lee had gotten both sets of weights off – possibly last opportunity Shino would have to attack.

The bugs swarmed after Lee, forcing him to push off the ground and flee to the best of his ability, but with only one leg unburdened, he was off balance and hobbled. The difference between his legs and the confusion of trying to avoid an unexpected attack was enough that he couldn't even manage his previous level of quickness.

Gai's face lost a lot of its previous confidence as he watched Lee stumble on a landing and then be almost totally enveloped in the swarm of black bugs before rolling and sort of half-limping half-running away.

Again Lee reached down to try to get the remaining weights off of his leg, but again the kikaichu bugs swarmed too close to him and he was forced to abandon the effort and flee while almost comically waving his hands to swat the insects away.

"I will not allow you to remove those final weights," Shino informed him calmly. "Several of my allies have already managed to attach themselves to you. They will alert the others of your location and will gradually drain away your chakra, slowing you down until you can no longer fight back."

The worried look on Lee's face slipped away as his lips spread into a large smile. "Then I will stop trying to take the weights off, Shino-kun." He lifted the weighted leg so that it was no longer on the ground and then brought his hands into the ready position.

A lone eyebrow rose above the rims of Shino's glasses and then the kikaichu swarm swirled around him – greatly reminding Naruto of the movements of Gaara's sand – and shot towards Lee.

The spandex clad ninja waited until almost the last second and then pushed off the ground using just his unencumbered leg, flipping back towards the far wall. The bugs were not deterred by the impressive feat, nor were they impressed when he performed still one more leap to get himself within about two meters of the wall. They just kept coming, but now Lee was waiting patiently for them to arrive.

As the cloud of insects reached him, Lee jumped back once more turning his body in the air so that his foot landed on the wall with his body pointing towards the oncoming swarm. For a split second he seemed to stick to the wall, but then he pushed off and shot forward like a green comet. He passed through the kikaichu so fast that it was hard to tell if any had the speed to catch hold of him in that brief instant before he was beyond them and flying towards Shino.

"Brilliant," Sasuke whispered next to Naruto as Lee landed and drove the palm of his hand up into Shino's chin.

"No shame in losing to him, eh?" Naruto chuckled.

Sasuke didn't have a reply as Lee's leg swept out, knocking Shino off his feet, and then driving his left hand down into the younger genin's chest while his right hand reached down and pulled off his remaining leg warmer.

That was all the time he had for attacking, however, as the kikaichu bugs managed to reach him at that point, forcing him to retreat momentarily. It didn't really matter though, the damage was done.

Lee's hands were on the remaining weights even before he landed. By the time the kikaichu bugs reached him again, he was completely unencumbered. His relieved smile lit up the room as he rose and watched the insects approaching him.

To most watching the match, Lee simply seemed to vanish. Certainly Sasuke's gasp of surprise was not the only one Naruto heard. Glancing around, he could see that outside of himself and the jounin, only Gaara's face remained impassive at the display of speed… though Gaara wasn't even watching the match, so it was hard to say if he would have been surprised or not. Naruto smiled at the boy who was staring at him and gave a little wave that he was sure was going to annoy his future friend before turning back to the match.

Shino's eyes couldn't be seen through the dark glasses he wore, but his eyebrows were both raised so it was probably that his eyes had widened at the sudden turn of events. If he even realized that Lee was now behind him, he gave no indication.

Even to Naruto, Lee was basically just a streak as he rushed at the Aburame boy, his arm cocked and ready to strike. Just as his fist came forward, Shino suddenly spun and brought his arms up.

Naruto had no idea if Shino was actually able to keep up with Lee's movements or if it was just a guess (which, if he knew Shino, would be called "the logical conclusion given current available data"), but it was damn impressive either way. The force of Lee's punch was still enough to knock Shino back, but it would have ended the fight had it not been blocked. Even still, he was sent sliding across the floor and ended up on one knee.

Lee was apparently just as shocked at Shino's ability as everyone else, because he didn't press his advantage.

The two genin stared at each other for a moment and then Shino turned to Hayate and said, "I forfeit. Continuing would no longer serve any purpose. I cannot match him with speed or strength and my allies are incapable of keeping up with him. The outcome is decided."

Hayate coughed and sniffled and then raised his hand. "Very well," he said in a tired voice, "Rock Lee is the winner!"

A little farther along the balcony Kiba groaned loudly at Shino's actions, grumbling that he should have kept trying even though it seemed helpless. Naruto smiled as Hinata tried to calm Kiba down before their teammate returned so that he wouldn't say anything to rub Shino's nose in his lose. What was even funnier was that beneath his calm exterior, Naruto was certain Shino was seething even more than Kiba. There was a good chance that any friendship between Lee and Shino that there might have been in the other timeline had now been put on hold for the foreseeable future. Shino, oddly, did not normally let things go very easily. Even years after it had happened, Shino still commented on being overlooked during the mission to bring back Sasuke when he defected to the Sound and also on Naruto's inability to remember him after returning from training with Jiraiya.

Hurting matters even more was Lee's excitement at having moved on. He was very polite to Shino first, of course. He thanked him for a good match and told him that he would be happy to face him again sometime, but then he practically danced back to Gai where the two went over the fight with a fine toothed comb with far more enthusiasm than seemed totally necessary.

Naruto glanced at Sasuke, raised a lone eyebrow, and then promptly stuck his hand in his mouth and bit down as he tried to hold in his laughter at the two's antics. Sasuke just shook his head and looked up at the scoreboard, anxiously awaiting his opportunity.

Yakushi Kabuto vs. Yamanaka Ino

Sasuke deflated, but Naruto didn't even notice as he turned his full attention to the match that was to come. Kabuto had been a point of confusion for him so far. Was he good? Was he a spy? It seemed like there wasn't anyway to know and without an answer to that (and to the question of what had happened to Orochimaru), there was no way to figure out if he was in his own past or some alternate universe that just closely resembled his own timeline. Perhaps he could gleam some clues by seeing how Kabuto fought here. Ino was no pushover, though it was doubtful that she'd be at a level that would really push Kabuto… assuming this Kabuto was even close to the level that Naruto remembered him being at.

Kabuto smiled and bowed respectfully to Ino as the two waited to be given permission to start. "Let's have a good match, Ino-chan."

Ino returned the smile. "Good luck, Kabuto-san."

"The same to you."

Then Hayate told them to start and the friendly smiles were gone as both began slowly circling each other, muscles tense and ready to spring into action at a moment's notice.

Naruto frowned as he watched the two genin fight. Even being as unsure of what to make of Kabuto as he was, he'd unconsciously been expecting a little more from the man who'd been such a thorn in Konoha's side. In the other timeline, Kabuto had been nearly on par with Kakashi, able to even stand against Tsunade for a short time when they had fought.

This Kabuto, however, was struggling – if only slightly – against the much smaller and physically weaker Ino. Twice he stumbled awkwardly and nearly left himself totally open to her attack, barely managing to scramble away before she landed any significant blows. It took a few more minutes before Naruto finally saw what was happening. Kabuto jumped to the side as Ino attacked, but his landing was weird and he fell… only, his landing wasn't weird. He'd done it on purpose. Just as his feet were about to hit the ground, he'd lifted one of them while pushing the other forward so he would land on his heel. There was no reason for him to do that, unless he was trying to convincingly fall. He was playing with Ino, but doing it in a way that was supposed to keep her from realizing it.

_'What's he playing at?'_ the blond wondered, his eyes narrowing.

Ino landed a punch to Kabuto's head, nearly spinning him around, but he quickly stuck out his foot and swept her legs out from under her as they both fell. The two genin rolled away from each other and scrambled back to their feet at almost the exact same time.

"You're very good, Kabuto-san," Ino said with a smile, breathing hard.

Kabuto _looked_ like he was breathing hard as well. "Thank you, though I should be doing better than this. I'm afraid that it is difficult for me to fight against a pretty girl."

Ino blushed slightly at the compliment even as her lips twisted in a scowl. "I'm more than just a pretty face," she retorted.

Kabuto rubbed the spot where she had just punched him and winced. "Believe me I am well aware of that!" he said with a smile and a wink. Then he added, "I think, however, that if I can stop concentrating on how pretty you are, I can beat you. You are very good, but your taijutsu needs work."

Ino's hands rose to the ready position and her face set with determination. "We'll see about that!"

Kabuto grinned. "I didn't say it would be _easy_."

Above them, Sasuke rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated sigh. "Are they fighting or flirting?"

Naruto didn't take his eyes off the action, his hands gripping the railing so tightly it hurt. This Kabuto was so different from the one he remembered it was jarring at times. "I'm sure they'll finish up soon, don't be so impatient."

"Easy for you to say," the Uchiha retorted, "you already got to go."

Naruto smiled as Ino tried using an Earth jutsu to catch Kabuto's feet – probably as a prelude to the Yamanaka clan's famous Shintenshin no Jutsu – only to have the gray haired genin just barely avoid it. The shock of missing was enough that Ino didn't quite turn in time as Kabuto got behind her and brought his hand up to touch her neck.

Naruto's smile vanished and his eyes widened. If this Kabuto was like the original (to him, anyway) Kabuto, this could be a killing blow… but neither Kabuto would do that with all these people watching, would they? At the same time, there was no rule against killing your opponent if you had the chance and accidents happened all the time. After what had happened to Team Eight, could he take the chance that it would all be okay?

"Where are you…?" Sasuke started to ask as Naruto vaulted over the railing without a second thought.

He was too late, however. Kabuto's finger touched a small nerve cluster on Ino's neck and she went completely limp.

Kabuto didn't even let her knees hit the ground before his hands slid around her waist to hold her up. He glanced over his shoulder at Hayate and said, "I would appreciate it if you ended the match now. She won't be able to move for a few seconds and I'd hate to damage such a lovely young lady."

Hayate nodded and raised his hand. "Winner: Yakushi Kabuto!"

Kabuto turned towards Naruto and smiled as he gently lowered Ino to the ground and touched her neck once more. "It will take a few seconds, but she will be fine. You're lucky the fight was already over or she could have been disqualified when you came to rescue her."

Naruto cringed, realizing how stupid he probably looked rushing to help someone in what had actually been one of the more friendly matches of the day. "Uh… sorry… it just looked like…"

"Ino-chan is very lucky to have a friend who is so concerned for her," Kabuto told him as he looked down at her once more, brushing a stray lock of blond hair away from her face. "I can see why you would be protective."

Naruto rubbed the back of his neck and coughed awkwardly. "No, it's nothing like that… I just thought… um, actually, I don't know what I was thinking…"

"Whatever it was, do you think you could do it somewhere else?" Kiba asked from behind him, a smirk in his voice. "You're in the way."

Naruto looked around, suddenly aware of the fact that Kiba and Temari were waiting rather impatiently for Ino, Kabuto, and Naruto to move. More than that, Ino and Kabuto had a reason to be there, having just finished their match, Naruto did not.

Naruto grinned sheepishly. "Sorry about that. Good luck, Kiba. Try not to make Akamaru do all the work; even a cool dog like him is going to get tired carrying your fat ass all the time!"

Then, as Kiba growled an angry – though still slightly playful – retort, Naruto and Kabuto helped a slightly woozy Ino up the stairs. As soon as they were out of the way, Hayate announced the next match and told the two genin that they could begin.

ooo

Sasuke resisted the urge to tap his foot impatiently, but only just barely. He was extremely annoyed at whatever forces had conspired to make him go last, especially after watching Naruto and Sakura do so well in their matches. Despite the way he'd basically laughed off Naruto's question about whether or not he was feeling any pressure to keep up with his two less-renowned teammates, the thought of possibly being the only one not to make it into the official third test made his stomach twist uncomfortably.

He glanced at the genin from Amegakure standing all the way at the other end of the walkway who was to be his opponent. The brown haired young man was the last of his teammates left in the Exam. Would he fight like either of them had or would he take a different tactic? Would he be strong or weak? Was he feeling any of what Sasuke was trying not to feel?

Sasuke supposed he'd just have to wait and find out. After such an excruciatingly long wait, what did another couple of minutes matter?

The Uchiha tried to focus on the fight between Kiba and Temari, but it just couldn't hold his attention for long. Part of it was that he and Kiba weren't anything close to what could be considered friends. Kiba was the sort who liked to think himself cooler than Sasuke felt was warranted and he also liked to imagine that the girls of their class saw the same coolness as well (he and Naruto were very similar in this regard). While he would work hard to impress girls like Ino, Ami, and Sakura, they fell all over themselves chasing Sasuke who didn't even care about them or make any effort to encourage them. That, Sasuke suspected, probably had something to do with Kiba bestowing the nickname "Uchihatards" on them – assuming Naruto had been honest when he laid the blame for the name at Kiba's feet.

The other reason why the fight couldn't hold his attention was because it was boring and very one sided. Temari was fast enough to keep up with Kiba and Akamaru's attacks and was exceptionally skilled at using her giant iron fan. On top of that, Akamaru was still not fully used to having only one eye and kept giving obvious clues about this weakness. It was especially unfortunate when he transformed into what looked like a beast-human hybrid that was identical to Kiba. Because he was continuous turning his head to see things on his blind side that Kiba could view by simply moving his eyes or using peripheral vision gave away, it was easy to tell the two of them apart.

This problem gave way to an even bigger one: Kiba kept stepping in to save Akamaru even when the puppy didn't need it.

Temari was clearly very smart, she noticed Akamaru's handicap and Kiba's reluctance to let his friend take care of himself and simply attacked Akamaru each and every chance she got. Kiba invariably moved to protect his friend and was hit with either the initial attack or a follow up one nearly every time.

Naruto groaned and looked up at the ceiling after a gust of wind slammed the boy and his dog into the wall. "We're going to have to work on that," he sighed.

Sasuke frowned. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, he can't just keep getting in Akamaru's way…"

"Yes, but what do you mean by '_We're_ going to have to work on that?'"

Naruto blanched. "Uh, slip of the tongue… I just meant that _he_ was going to have to work on it."

"There's no need to hide it, Naruto" Kakashi spoke up.

"Hide what?" both boys asked in unison.

"Kurenai-san asked me if Naruto could help her team work on tactics when fighting a large number of enemies," Kakashi explained. "Since he can use Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu, she thought he would be the ideal assistant for that sort of training."

"Oh, right" Naruto said, nodding eagerly. "Sorry, I just wasn't sure if I was allowed to say anything or not."

"I doubt Sasuke-kun cares all that much that a team requested to use you as their glorified punching bag," Kakashi replied, his one visible eye shifting in a way that meant he was smiling beneath his mask, "though it is a good idea to learn to _not_ go around dropping unintentional hints to secrets you want to keep. If you want to be a good Hokage, you'll have to learn to control your tongue."

Naruto cringed and rubbed the back of his head. "I'll keep that in mind, sensei, but I'm not great at sneaking around. I've always preferred to take the direct path."

"Don't sell yourself short; you can be plenty sneaky when you put your mind to it. You just need to be more aware of your surroundings sometimes… speaking of which, Sasuke-kun, your opponent is waiting."

Both boys turned to find that Kiba was already being carried off on a stretcher with Akamaru following right next to him, whimpering softly. Temari had apparently long since returned to her spot as she was already leaning casually against her folded up fan with a bored look on her face. How the fight had ended, Sasuke could only guess, but it seemed likely that Kiba had continued trying to protect his puppy all the way up until it cost him the match. He glanced up at the scoreboard.

Uchiha Sasuke vs. Shigure

"Good luck," Naruto whispered as Sasuke took a deep breath and turned towards the stairs. "Remember, you can't lose here. I want to face you in the next round."

Sasuke grinned at his friend. Something about Naruto's voice seemed to fill him with the cocky swagger that he lost whenever he felt like he wasn't advancing as quickly as his teammates. There was a hint of a friendly challenge in the way Naruto said it that just demanded a confident reply. "Wait here, I'll be right back."

"Don't take too long, I'm getting hungry."

Their smiles grew a little larger as they locked eyes and then Sasuke turned and walked calmly down the steps, feeling ready to take on anything.

Shigure was obviously older than Sasuke, probably close to twenty years old, and as such was at least ten centimeters taller. He was dressed similarly to his teammates, but was lacking the conical hats that they'd worn. His right eye was closed, maybe permanently, and one of the two long, ugly scars on that side of his face actually passed over his eyelid – probably a souvenir from a past encounter with a kunai or some other weapon. On his back he had six umbrellas, unlike his teammates who had only carried two with them, and a dark gray cloak hung down from his shoulders.

The brown haired genin smiled confidently at Sasuke as he approached, revealing a strange piercing or stitching on the right side of his lips. Two thin cords or wires looped from the top lip to the bottom, preventing that side of his mouth from opening as wide as the rest.

"Thanks for joining us," Shigure chuckled.

Sasuke didn't bother replying.

"I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to finish this quick. I have no intention of taking it easy on you like Midari and Baiu did in their fights."

Sasuke shrugged. "Good, I hate long waits."

Hayate coughed into his hand and then said, "Alright, the tenth and final match between Uchiha Sasuke and Shigure will begin… now!"

Sasuke didn't even wait for Hayate to get completely out of the way. He dove forward, a kunai already in his hand and ready to strike.

Shigure drew an umbrella and knocked aside the initial swipe of the kunai, before pivoting and driving the tip of the umbrella at Sasuke's stomach. Sasuke's free hand caught the umbrella's tip and he used it to swing himself down and under so that he came up inside Shigure's defenses. The genin from Amegakure was not caught off guard, however, and he quickly twisted to the side as he pulled another umbrella off his back and slammed it down across Sasuke's arm as he tried to attack with the kunai again.

Sasuke's weapon was knocked from his hand and as he reached for another, Shigure leapt back from him and started to open one of the umbrellas.

Sasuke hadn't forgotten what had happened during Sakura's fight and knew what was coming. He centered himself, waiting for Shigure to be committed in his aim, and then dove to the side as a hail of senbon passed through the air where he'd been standing only a split second before. Sasuke rolled smoothly to his feet, three kunai clutched between the fingers of his right hand, and returned fire with pinpoint accuracy. Unfortunately, the umbrella not only served as an offensive weapon, but was also useful for defense and Shigure brought it up in time to deflect the projectiles.

"Sasuke, look out!" Naruto yelled from above.

Sasuke didn't stop to think about what his teammate was talking about, he simply dove to the side again, somersaulting once so that he was facing back towards where he'd been standing. He came up just in time to see several senbon stab into the ground where he would have been had Naruto not yelled.

A feral grin played across Shigure's partially sutured lips. "I can control the senbon with my chakra. They'll always strike were I want them to. You have no choice but to spend all your time running and that will only prolong your life for a few minutes at best." The Ame-nin thrust the second umbrella at Sasuke, sending a new batch of senbon at him, this time at a wider spread to make them more difficult to dodge.

Again Sasuke was forced to dive out of the way, this time hitting the ground and instantly pushing himself off again to keep away from the deadly attack. Even that wasn't enough to totally avoid all the senbon and his leg, side, and arm cried out in pain as they were hit by a couple of the razor sharp needles. He landed awkwardly, his injured leg not ready to hold up the weight required of it, and fell to his knees. A quick glance at his arm revealed that one of the senbon had almost passed completely through his shoulder while another had pierced his bicep with enough force that it was sticking out the other side of his arm. He moved his arm experimentally and found that his moment would be both limited and painful. With grunt of pain, he reached down and pulled a senbon out of his calf. It hurt like hell, but he would deal with it.

He looked up at Shigure and scowled at the smile on the young man's face. Unconsciously his eyes shifted to Naruto.

His blond teammate looked worried and was leaning so far over the railing that it seemed like he might fall over the top of it if a breeze hit him just right. Blue eyes met black and suddenly Naruto smiled.

"Come on Sasuke! This guy is making you look bad! Quit messing around!"

Sasuke shook his head. _'What a dumbass, making a scene like that.'_ Still, Naruto had a point. Shigure _was_ making him look bad and that should be unacceptable. Sasuke hadn't had many one on one fights that weren't just for sparring purposes and the ones that he had been in had all ended badly for him. Itachi had rendered him helpless without even throwing a punch. Kakashi had defeated him easily without even trying. Sayaka had been killed, but that was thanks in part to Sakura's courageous intervention and luck and even then he'd been left unconscious for the rest of the day. To make matters worse, he woke to find himself being carried by Naruto who had killed a more powerful opponent and hadn't even gotten hurt! Then there was Lee who had beaten him handily and dislocated his shoulder and Neji who would have beaten him and taken their scroll had Naruto not arrived to save him.

Every time he faced someone on his own, he was left defeated, unconscious, injured, or some combination there of. He looked down on Naruto for his occasional stupidity, but when push came to shove, Naruto had always performed and Sasuke was always defeated. How could he ever face Itachi if he couldn't even beat a genin in this exam? How could he avenge his clan, his relatives, and his parents if he lost here? How could he face Naruto or Sakura if he continued to let Shigure make him look this bad?

Itachi was already in ANBU when he was Sasuke age. He would have defeated Shigure in a heartbeat, maybe faster. In fact, Itachi probably could have beaten Shigure when he was just a little over half Sasuke's age. Itachi could have done it because he had awakened his Sharingan by that point… because he was the sort of unrivaled genius that came around once in a hundred years… because he was better…

Sasuke felt a shudder run through his body at the thought. Itachi was better than him. Itachi could use the Sharingan. Itachi was a true genius.

Sasuke's eyes returned to Shigure and he swallowed hard as the Ame genin pulled out another umbrella loaded with senbon. It would almost be better just to let them hit him. To end it all right now rather than living life as such a pathetic failure, as a false genius. He'd said he wouldn't die until he'd killed his brother, but that was obviously an even more delusional goal than when Naruto would constantly claim that he was going to be Hokage despite being the worst student in their class.

_"It would be worthless to kill someone like you, my foolish brother… If you want to kill me… curse me! Hate me! Live a long and unsightly life… Run away… Run away and cling to your pitiful life. And someday, when you have the same 'eyes' as me, come before me."_

The payload was unleashed as Itachi's words rang in Sasuke's mind. His life was going to end here. He hadn't run away as much as he should have, apparently. The Uchiha clan would simply vanish, having been destroyed by a traitor and failed by a weakling. Itachi was right, it would have been worthless to kill someone like him back then, and probably even more so now. He hadn't even managed to cling to the pitiful life his brother had cruelly spared on _that_ night.

The senbon seemed to be moving so slowly as they came to end his life. He could pick out each and every point as they angled in at him.

His reflexes screamed for him to move and he gave in with a mental shrug. He was dead either way, but at least he could make a good show of trying to avoid it… simply letting himself die while wallowing in self pity was more pathetic than even he could bear.

He twisted slightly to the side then drifted back the other direction as one leg lifted to avoid a few more of the senbon. His hand dipped into his kunai holster of its own volition and rose up to deflect three more senbon, actually knocking them into still more of the needles which redirected those as well. Two more twists, one half turning of his head, three more deflections with his kunai, and a one handed cartwheel and all of a sudden he found himself with nothing to dodge.

Sasuke blinked in confusion as an audible gasp could be heard from the otherwise totally silent room. He looked around, noting how different the room looked all of a sudden. Every detail was sharpened to the point where he could pick out a tiny speck of dirt as the faint breeze from under a doorway rolled it across the floor until it fell into one of the cracks that an earlier fight had created.

"Oh, hell yeah!" Naruto roared from above him. "Kick his ass, Showoff!"

Sasuke started to turn towards Naruto but saw a tiny movement out of the corner of his eye. Instantly he jerked his head back, turning it to further protect his face, while his hand came up. The senbon passed by his ear and his waiting hand caught it on the other side.

Sasuke looked down at the weapon in wonder for a moment and then his hand began to shake. The senbon slipped from his trembling fingers and dropped to the ground. "Sharingan," he whispered in awe.

The senbon hit point first, rose back up and flipped twice in the air while Sasuke's eyes mapped and predicted its movements perfectly. On the second flip, his foot shot out, kicking it back at Shigure. It would have pierced the other genin's heart had it not hit the tube running out of his chest.

Shigure's eyes widened at the sight of Sasuke's red eyes with the two black tomoe around the pupil. "What the hell is this?" he asked, taking an unconscious step backwards.

Sasuke continued to look around the room in semi-wonder, taking in the difference the Sharingan made. After a few seconds his chest began to tremble as his lips slowly formed a smile and then he let his head fall back and laughed in relief and joy.

He wasn't a failure. Itachi wasn't out of reach. His life wasn't worthless. All of his dreams were still reachable. For the first time in a long time, he honestly felt worthy of the name Uchiha.

"Enough of this," Shigure growled, drawing Sasuke's eyes back to him. "I'm ending it right now!" He pulled the remaining three umbrellas from his back, opened them, and threw them into the air where they began to spin. His fingers began flashing through seals as he called out, "Jouro Senbon no Jutsu!"

There was a strange echo to his voice that gave him pause as he started to raise his hands to control the falling projectiles. As he looked at his target, he saw that Sasuke was mimicking his movements perfectly. Shigure's hands came down slightly as he looked at Sasuke in confusion.

"What are you…" His question was cut off by several needles hitting the ground at his feet. The genin's mouth fell open as he realized what was happening. His attack was being turned against him. He quickly lifted his hands to try to direct the needles at Sasuke, but it was far too late for that. Sasuke had control of them even though the jutsu was supposed to be known only to a few shinobi in Amegakure. How this had happened was something he didn't have time to consider as hundreds of senbon came flying down at him, each driving nearly all the way through the solid stone floor around him.

Strangely, however, none of them actually hit him. Instead they all landed in a perfect circle all around him.

Sasuke smiled cockily. "I don't plan on finishing you with a lame ass technique like that. It would be too quick and messy."

He dashed forward again. Shigure's shock wasn't enough to keep him from throwing a punch at the hasty genin, but Sasuke ducked under it easily, driving his fist up into the older ninja's chin, lifting him off the ground. Sasuke leapt after him, spinning in the air and kicking the genin into a nearby wall. The Uchiha's feet had barely hit the ground before he was already moving again.

Shigure landed on all fours after hitting the ground and quickly pushed himself back to his feet, though he was forced to lean heavily against the wall. He managed to take two deep breaths and then looked up just in time to see Sasuke taking an arcing path towards him.

When Sasuke was just a few meters away from his target, he stepped up onto the wall without breaking stride and continued forward while running parallel to the ground. He didn't even slow down as he reached Shigure. He simply reached out, caught his opponent by the top of his cloak, and then leapt off the wall, dragging Shigure with him and building up momentum to throw the Ame genin across the room.

This time Shigure did not get back to his feet, only managing to push himself up to his knees.

Sasuke was already in front of him, his fingers quickly forming seals until he ended on Tiger. "Katon: Goukakyu no Jutsu!" He took a deep breath, brought his fingers to his mouth and blew out an immense ball of fire.

When the flames died down, the area next to Shigure had been blackened and large blisters had appeared on the genin's scarred face.

Sasuke smiled as his fingers formed the seals once more. "I won't miss this time," he warned and then took a deep breath again.

"I give up!" Shigure cried out.

Sasuke let out the breath that appeared as nothing more than a small trail of smoke and then looked over at Hayate as the sickly jounin said, "Winner! Uchiha Sasuke!"

Naruto let out a loud whoop from the balcony and Ino cheered as well, but Sasuke barely heard them. A medic-nin tried to get him to go back and have his wounds treated, but he was so hyped up on adrenaline that he couldn't even feel the pain. Besides that, he was determined to finally have a victory that didn't result in him needing immediate medical treatment. He waved off the medic's concerns and looked down at his hand as he clenched it into a fist.

He'd won, he'd awakened his Sharingan… and Itachi's days were now numbered.

ooo

Naruto could barely contain his excitement as Sasuke walked up the stairs. His friend had done it… hell, he'd done everything. He'd won the fight, he'd gotten his Sharingan, and he'd gotten a lot stronger! What more could he possibly have accomplished during one match?

The smirk on Sasuke's face as he rejoined Naruto announced that he was aware of his accomplishments as well.

"Took you long enough," Naruto said in a obviously fake bored voice. "Did you have to play around with him for so long before getting serious?"

"Like you're one to talk."

"Yeah, but I didn't look like I was going to die at any second for most of my match."

Sasuke smile grew larger. "To each his own."

The two boys stared at each other for a moment longer, each grinning happily and then Hayate's voice drew their attention back to the main floor.

"Well, with this, the primary trials for the round three test have been completed! To all of you who won the rights to compete in the Third Test of the Chuunin Exam…" his voice trailed off as he coughed, "well, one is missing, but… congratulations to you all! If you would please come down here and line up, we'll explain what happens next." He looked back at Sarutobi as most of the genin hurriedly lined up (with a few exceptions, most notably the red head with the large calabash gourd on his back) and said, "Ah, well then, Hokage-sama, if you would please explain the next test to them."

The old man smiled around his pipe and stepped forward, looking around at the faces before him as Gaara finally joined the group. The Suna genin chose to stand next to Naruto who glanced at him out of the corner of his eye and grinned.

"Yes, let's talk about the next test. As I told you before, in the main event your matches will be seen by everybody. Each of you will fight to represent the strength of your countries. Please, show off your power with no reserves… which is why the finals will be held one month from now."

A couple of genin grumbled, wondering why they couldn't just get it over with as soon as possible, but Sarutobi shook his head. "This break will be needed for preparations."

"What… what do y-you mean by that, Hokage-sama?" Hinata asked.

Sarutobi smiled kindly at the young kunoichi and took his pipe from his mouth. "I mean that, in addition to informing all the various daimyo and shinobi leaders, this is the time needed to arrange for the gathering of the event… and this is also the preparation time for you examination students."

"I don't get it," Kankuro grumbled. What does _that_ mean?"

"We're giving you time to get to know yourselves and your opponents, to prepare yourselves for what is to come. It is the time period where you will calculate your chances of winning by analyzing the data you accumulated during the trial competition. The battles up to now had you fight as if you were in an actual combat situation where you had to assume you would be fighting an unknown opponent. The finals, however, will not be like this. There are those who showed all that they can do already to their potential opponents and there are those who were injured during their battles. To make everything fair, the one month should be sued to all of you to advance and improve yourselves… though, of course, you should probably rest your bodies as well."

The Third looked over his shoulder at Anko and nodded before turning back to the genin. "I'll be dismissing you in just a moment, but first there's something that has to be done for the finals." Anko stepped forward with a box in her hands. "There are pieces of paper inside the box that Anko is holding. Each one of you will take one piece."

"I'll come to you," Anko said quickly. "Just wait patiently for your turn!" One by one the genin all reached into the box, with Anko smiling predatorily over them, making sure they only took one piece. "There will be one person who gets a bye in the next round, just like Kankuro received this time. He will be the only person who doesn't really get to pick a piece of paper. He already received one bye, so he will automatically be given number one to prevent him from getting lucky a second time."

When everyone had their piece of paper Sarutobi stepped forward once more. "Alright, you all have a number. Please tell us what it is, so that Ibiki can mark you down, starting from the left."

Gaara looked at his tab. "Eight."

Naruto was next. "Two."

"Five," Sasuke announced.

Hinata bit her lip. "Um, I… I have the bye."

Farther down the line Neji snorted contemptuously. "Shocking."

Naruto's angry retort was cut off by Kabuto stepping forward. "I have seven."

"Three," Temari said.

Kankuro rolled his eyes. "One."

"Nine," Lee said.

"Ten," Neji told Ibiki, though his face was turned towards Lee, a small smile on his face.

"Four," Shikamaru finished at the right end of the line.

"That leaves Sakura-chan with number six," Sarutobi said. "Alright, now I will reveal to you the final tournament! Ibiki, please show them the match arrangements."

Ibiki held up the paper he'd been writing on, revealing a tournament bracket.

Next to him, Naruto heard a sharp intake of breath from Sasuke. It wasn't hard to see why. The third match up would be between him and Sakura.

Naruto's eyes glanced over the paper, noting the rest of the fights:

1. Kankuro vs. 2. Uzumaki Naruto

3. Temari vs. 4. Nara Shikamaru

5. Uchiha Sasuke vs. 6. Haruno Sakura

7. Yakushi Kabuto vs. 8. Gaara

9. Rock Lee vs. 10. Hyuuga Neji

11. Hyuuga Hinata - bye

This timeline had arranged for some interesting matches. Lee would face Neji in the first round with the winner moving on to fight Hinata. Shikamaru was fighting Temari – something that made Naruto wonder if their relationship would be the same as it had been in the future. His eyes traveled up and down the sheet, picking out potential matches that could occur and when. If he wanted to face either Gaara or Sasuke he would have to wait until near the end. In fact, assuming they won their first fights, they would face each other in the second round.

Actually, with the odd number or participants, the top of the tournament sheet was a mess.

"What happens after the second round?" Naruto asked. "Does someone get another bye?"

Sarutobi smiled at him. "Assuming that all competitors are able to continue after the second round, the main judges – myself and the Kazekage – will determine what would be most fair. Obviously at that point there will be at least two members of one village being represented, so in all likelihood, those two will fight while the other is given a bye to prevent any ganging up on the odd man or woman out." He looked at the genin and asked, "Are there any other questions?"

Shikamaru wanted to know if only one person could become a chuunin, since there could only be one winner. Sarutobi explained that the tournament was more of a showcase for their abilities. Winning allowed you to stay in longer and show more of what you had, but it wasn't necessary for showing the judges that you were ready to advance in rank. This meant, as Temari pointed out, that every single one of them could become chuunin if they all showed sufficient ability, but also, Sarutobi countered, that there was a chance that none of them – even the winner – would be judged as being ready.

Once everyone seemed to have had their questions answered, Sarutobi smiled and said, "Well then, thanks for all the efforts you exerted for these trials. You are all dismissed until a month from now!"

Most of the genin quickly headed for the exit, eager to either start resting or gathering information on their opponents. Soon, Naruto, Sasuke, and Kabuto were the only genin left.

"Good luck to you both," Kabuto said with a smile. His eyes shifted towards Sasuke and he added, "Sasuke-kun, I hope to see you in the second round."

"I'll be there," Sasuke replied confidently, but then he seemed to realize what that would mean and his smile faded noticeably as he looked over at the doors that lead to the infirmary where Sakura had been taken.

Kabuto sighed and glanced at the door as well. "That was an unfortunate draw," he said, "but I'm sure that Sakura-chan will understand and the two of you will be able to show off your talents with no hard feelings regardless of the outcome."

Naruto nodded, still feeling uneasy about this strange new Kabuto. Then he shook those thoughts off and put a hand on Sasuke's shoulder. "Come on, let's go break the _good_ news to her. See you in a month, Kabuto-san."

"I can't wait, Naruto-kun."

o

o

A/N: Sorry this is a day (and perhaps a little more) late. I have two excellent excuses, however. First, I was lazy and didn't work on it as much as I should have during the week (there were some extenuating circumstances, but nothing that should have slowed me down this much) and Second, I wanted to see the Incredible Hulk, so I did that instead of finishing this up last night… hmm, those excuses don't really sound as excellent as I'd hoped they would…

Hopefully the chapter was good enough that you'll forgive me being a bit tardy here. The fight between Ino and Kabuto gave me fits for a while (part of the reason for my laziness… procrastination makes difficult problems disappear, don't you know?), I just couldn't seem to end it properly. I think I like it now, but I spent the better part of three days staring at the screen thinking: _'How the heck do I do this?'_ Sasuke's wasn't exactly a walk in the park either, but at least I knew how it would end! Were it not for the fact that it would have made things even more boring than these prelims already were, I kind of wish that I would have put Sasuke's fight in the previous chapter. Had I done that, he would have gotten his Sharingan in the exact same number of chapters as he did in canon… which would have been pretty funny I think! Oh well, that's what I get for not planning out something so frivolous.

Also, just to give you some heads up. The next chapter (as in next Friday... hopefully) will be the last for a little while. I'm going out of town for my little sister's wedding (I'd say 'baby sister' but it sounds weird to put it that way since she's getting married) and won't be back for two weeks. Therefore, after next weeks update I definitely won't update for at least two weeks, though THREE is actually more likely (since I won't have much time to work on the story while I'm gone). Sorry about this, but that's life.

Anyway, thanks for all the reviews. 1,660 and still climbing… nearly double my previous best review total for a story and I'm not even half way done yet!

Shintenshin no Jutsu – "Mind Body Switch Technique" Ino's favorite ninjutsu. The user enters the enemy's body and takes control. It's slow moving and if you miss it takes a while to get your consciousness back in your body, so you have to make sure that your enemy isn't going to move after you've cast it.

Jouro Senbon no Jutsu – "Raining Needles" This is the one move Shigure was able to use before being crushed by Gaara in canon. The user throws his umbrellas up in the air, they send out a whole bunch of needles which are then controlled by the user's chakra so that they all strike their target. According to Shigure they have the ability to pierce 5 mm of steel.

Katon: Goukakyu no Jutsu – "Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique" You know it, you love it, it's a Konoha favorite. Does just what the name says: creates a big fireball.


	30. Chapter 29

Chapter 29

o

The door squeaked softly as it opened and then quickly closed. The noise was faint, but it was out of place enough with the other sounds in the room – of which there were very few anyway – that it drew her subconscious attention and began to rouse her from her semi-sleep. Her eyelids were heavy and hard to lift, so she settled for trying to listen to what was happening around her as she waited for her body to regain the strength needed to open her eyes.

"Sh… oking pretty… od. I bet i… be too long…" The words seemed to fade in and out of focus as her groggy mind struggled to return to full consciousness.

"She'll be…"

"Are you… ing to tell…r?" By the second time she heard this voice, she was awake enough to recognize it as Naruto, which meant that the other one was probably either Sasuke, Kakashi, or Hinata since those were the people Naruto spent the most time with.

"She'll h… on enough. She sho… centrate on healing…" Definitely Sasuke.

"If you don't tell… e'll be pissed."

"She'll… derstand."

"Do you actually _know_ Sakura-chan?"

"…Okay, she'll be pissed, but she'll understand _eventually_."

"Understand what?" Sakura asked with a groan as her eyes finally managed to open. Her vision was a little blurry, but she could distinctly make out the shapes of Sasuke and Naruto standing next to her bed. At the sound of her voice, both boys turned and leaned over her, Sasuke's hand came to rest next to her shoulder (almost close enough to be considered touching) while Naruto's squeezed her right hand.

"Sakura-chan! You're awake," Naruto said with a smile.

"Barely," she said, blinking her eyes and trying to get them to focus properly. "Iyashi-san gave me some pretty strong pain medicine before he started removing the senbon. My brain feels like it's wrapped in a wet blanket or something." She smiled weakly at her teammates and then asked, "So, what will I understand?"

"Besides your head, how do you feel?" Sasuke asked rather than answer the question.

"A little sore, but I'll live. What will I understand?"

Their reactions were unsettling, though also a bit funny. Both of them simultaneously began acting nervous or perhaps embarrassed. What was funny about it was that Sakura hadn't noticed until now that they both had distinct motions that they went through every time something happened to make them feel uncomfortable or awkward. Sasuke crossed his arms, frowned a little, and looked slightly up and to the right. Naruto, on the other hand, lowered his head and scratched the back of his neck while shuffling one foot. It was kind of cute that they both were so obvious about these sorts of feelings, but a little unnerving that they refused to answer her question and felt awkward about it.

"You really shouldn't worry about it," Sasuke said at last. "Just get back on your feet and then we'll tell you."

"Sasuke-kun, I'm going to worry about it more if you keep refusing to tell me. What's going on?"

"The next test is a tournament," Naruto said, shooting a look at Sasuke. "One-on-one fights: loser is out, winner advances, with judges watching to see if any of us are ready to be chuunin…" he paused, shuffled his feet a little more and then started to go on, but was interrupted by Sasuke.

"I'm your first opponent."

Sakura's eyes widened and she suddenly wished that Sasuke hadn't told her. Actually, she was glad that they'd told her, she just wished that she could be facing anyone but Sasuke. It would be bad enough fighting someone that she cared so much about, but to face someone who was her superior in every possible area? There wasn't even much of a point in showing up other than to get humiliated in front of everyone.

"Oh," she said after a long silence, "well, at least you know you'll be advancing."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sasuke snapped, his eyes suddenly hard.

"Just… just that you're, you know… better… than me," Sakura whispered haltingly. "There's no way I could beat you so you know you're going to—"

Sasuke's fist slammed into the wall with enough force to shatter the wood finish. "Don't you ever say that again!" he hissed. A medic-nin rushed into the room, looking instantly at Naruto and scowling, but Sasuke waved the woman away without even turning around, his eyes still staring down at the shocked Sakura. "You've improved a lot more than I have since we graduated. You always carry your weight on the missions. You beat me to the top of that damn tree. You saved me when we fought Sayaka. Don't you _ever_ act like you're just some dead weight that Naruto and I have to carry!" He paused for a second and then added, "… that's Naruto's place on the team."

"Hey!" Naruto shouted in annoyance.

Sasuke ignored him. "You and I are going to fight in a month and you are going to be incredible. Maybe I'll win, but if I even _think_ you aren't trying your hardest or are giving up and throwing the match, I'll…" his eyes shifted from side to side as he tried to think of what he could possibly do should he run into that situation. Finally he settled on possibly the single most shocking thing Sakura could have imagined him threatening, "…I'll forfeit, right there."

Sakura swallowed hard and nodded, not trusting her voice. She didn't think she'd ever even heard Sasuke say so much without pause and he'd set the new record while – sort of – encouraging her! She didn't have any idea what to make of it.

Before she had a chance to try to figure it out, there was a soft knock on the door and then Kakashi stepped inside. "Well, you three certainly are boisterous. I hope that means that Sakura is feeling better."

"I'm okay, sensei," Sakura replied, "just a little sore still."

"Well you'll have until tomorrow to rest up, but after that we're going to need to get started. A month is not a very long time to improve yourselves." He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall. "Speaking of that, we need to discuss how we're going to handle this. With all three of you advancing, it wouldn't be advisable for you to continue to train with each other too much. If you want to do it from time to time, that's fine, but keep in mind that you might be revealing something that could be your undoing when you face a teammate."

"Does that mean that you aren't going to train us, sensei?" Sakura asked.

"I wouldn't make a very good teacher for you or Naruto in this case," Kakashi said. "There are different types of ninja and Sasuke and I are the most similar, plus I'm the only one who can help him learn to use his Sharingan."

Sakura's mouth fell open. "_Sasuke's_ Sharingan?"

"Eh, we'll explain later," Naruto whispered with a chuckle.

"Anyway," Kakashi continued, "Naruto should be pretty easy to find an instructor for, but you pose a bit of a problem Sakura. Kurenai has Hinata in the Third Test, so it wouldn't be fair to ask her to train you and most of the other jounin I know that _would_ be good fits for you are busy with other duties." He stopped and a contemplative look appeared on his face. "I think I have a solution," he said after a moment, "I can cash in a few favors and get you one or two kunoichi to help you improve your combat skills for the first week – which is probably as long as I can possibly get them to take off – and after that I have a friend who might be able to come and help you improve the areas that you are naturally strong in anyway."

Sakura wasn't sure how she felt about being passed off to someone else while Kakashi, the most amazing jounin she knew – though he was, admittedly, just about the _only_ jounin she really knew – continued to train Sasuke. Still, he seemed to be going through some trouble lining people up for her and it was obvious that he was a different type of ninja than her. Maybe training with some kunoichi who could relate to her as a woman wouldn't be such a bad thing.

"Naruto, for you…" Kakashi started to say, but Naruto waved him off.

"I'll train with Iruka-sensei unless you can find me someone really, really amazing," the blond announced. "He was a slave driver at the Academy, I'm sure he'll whip me into shape in no time."

"He's only a chuunin," Sasuke pointed out.

"And you're only a genin," Naruto shot back with a smile, "so if he gets me up to his level, I'll have no problem kicking your ass!"

Sakura smiled at her friend's confidence, but she couldn't help noticing that he was expecting to face Sasuke and not her. No matter what Sasuke had said, the fact was that she wasn't nearly at his level and she was going to lose.

ooo

It was too early for Iruka to be home yet, so Naruto headed to the Academy to see if he was teaching that day. As luck would have it, not only was he teaching, but his class was out in the practice field working on their kunai throwing (for kids Konohamaru's age, this meant most of them were playing or talking instead of seriously applying themselves to the task at hand). Naruto stood on the rooftop of a nearby building, watching the children who would grow up to be men and women he led into battle, handed out mission assignments to, and – unfortunately – laid to rest when things didn't go well on one of those missions or battles. There were at least five kids down there whose names he specifically remembered ordering inscribed on the cenotaph.

Naruto closed his eyes against the memory and swallowed it down. They were alive now, that was what mattered. He would just have to do his best to keep them that way.

As he returned to watching, he saw Konohamaru step up to his mark and lazily toss a shuriken towards the wooden target while chatting with Moegi. Naruto waited until the little boy was about to toss another and leapt from the building.

He landed right in front of Konohamaru's target just as the shuriken reached him. Konohamaru's eyes went wide and he opened his mouth to call out a warning, but before he could, Naruto's finger slipped through the hold in the center of the projectile. The blond grinned as the star spun to a stop.

"Bro! That was… awesome!" Konohamaru cheered.

"It would be even more awesome if you stopped messing around and really practiced," Naruto replied, walking towards the group of children.

"Ah come on," Konohamaru whined, "this stuff is boring." His eyes lit up as a thought hit him. "Hey, why don't you teach us a cool jutsu?!"

Naruto shook his head as he slipped the shuriken from his finger and flipped it up into the air with his thumb. "Iruka-sensei would be a better teacher for the types of jutsu you should be learning." Konohamaru's face fell and the telltale signs of an angry outburst began to appear on his face. Naruto smiled as the shuriken came down in his hand and he flipped it back up again, this time aiming it back over his shoulder. "But I'll still show you something else that's just as cool."

He spun on his heel, his hand dipping into his kunai pouch and retrieving three of the throwing knives. Two were tossed into the air while the third was flicked at the target. His left hand came up over his shoulder, catching one of the two blades, and throwing it with deadly accuracy; while his right hand slipped behind his back to catch the final kunai which he also tossed towards the target.

When he was finished, he admired his handiwork and took a small bow to the children who hadn't quite figured out what he'd done yet.

Udon was the quickest to catch on. "He hit three bullseyes… all in a row!" the drippy nosed boy exclaimed.

Naruto's smile widened a little. "Looks more like four to me," he corrected, pointing at the shuriken that had been pinned through its middle by the first kunai he'd thrown. The subsequent two had hit their mark directly below that one, forming a perfect line.

"How'd you do that bro?" Konohamaru demanded, his eyes wide with delight.

Naruto leaned in close, as if about to impart some big secret and whispered, "Practice."

Konohamaru scowled and crossed his arms, not impressed. "This is another one of those 'no shortcuts' things, isn't it?"

Naruto wasn't totally sure what he was referring to, but he seemed to have the idea. "Yup… though being naturally awesome helps, of course."

"I don't know about 'natural awesomeness,' but that kind of accuracy takes a lot of practice," Iruka remarked, stepping up behind Naruto. "The sort that my students can't get while they're gawking at showoffs…"

Naruto chuckled embarrassedly and winced. "Sorry about that Iruka-sensei."

"I suppose it's good for the students to see what they can do if they put enough effort into it," the chuunin replied with a gracious smile. Then he pulled a kunai from his own hip pouch and threw it into the air. A second kunai came out and was thrown so that it intercepted the first half way down, altering it's trajectory so that it hit the handles of all three of Naruto's kunai, knocking them out of the target.

Iruka looked around at his impressed students for a moment and then said, "I'll teach you how to do that once you've gotten to the point where you hit the bullseye every time."

There was a brief pause as this new piece of info settled in and then every student in the class was hurriedly pulling out weapons and returning to their practice with renewed energy.

Iruka smiled as he watched them and then looked down at Naruto. "You've certainly improved since you graduated. I must admit that I'm impressed with Kakashi's teaching skills. Whenever I tried to teach you the proper way to throw a kunai you seemed to either tune me out or get distracted."

"Was I really that bad?" Naruto asked.

Iruka chuckled good naturedly. "I lectured you for nearly an hour after one of your throws almost went through the ten year old class's window! It's been a couple of months, but I really thought that was one of my better ones, I'm surprised you've forgotten it already."

Naruto tried not to cringe and partly succeeded. Conversations about things he'd done right before graduating were tough. For him it had been years and years since these things happened, but the people on the other side of the conversation were only separated from it by a few months. It was dangerous ground for him to tread and he needed to change the subject quickly. "Oh, no, I remember _that_… I just thought you were overreacting a bit."

Iruka smiled kindly, probably not believing him. "Ah, I see."

"So, um, I was wondering if I could get that letter back from you," Naruto said quickly, glad that Iruka had given him the chance to somewhat smoothly get away from his actions as a child and get to more important matters.

Iruka seemed a bit surprised at the topic Naruto jumped to, but quickly recovered, "Of course. It's at my apartment; I'll get it for you as soon as I'm done here."

Naruto nodded appreciatively. "Thanks."

The chuunin looked contemplatively down at the young ninja for a few seconds and then asked, "Are you ever going to tell me what it was all about?"

"Someday," the blond promised, "maybe after I've figured it out myself."

"How about the Chuunin Exam, do I get to hear about that or is it a secret too?"

Naruto grinned. "I'll give you _all _the details tonight when you treat me to Ichiraku." He glanced over at Konohamaru as the little boy sent three shuriken whistling through the air in quick succession. Two hit the bullseye, another was pretty close. "Have a good day, Iruka-sensei. I'll stop by your place later on so I can get the letter and then we can walk to Ichiraku's."

"I'm looking forward to it," the chuunin replied with a smile.

ooo

The following day, Sakura was out of the hospital and feeling a little nervous as she waited at spot Kakashi had told her she would be meeting the kunoichi he'd found to help her. He'd said that he would be there to make the introductions, but – true to form – he was absent and the appointed time was drawing near. Knowing him, he'd probably show up at about the same time they were finishing.

Needing to find something to exorcise the nervous energy that was swirling around within her, Sakura stretched her right leg, wincing at the soreness still present despite the healing sessions she'd gone through the day before. Her back hurt worse, but she didn't want to stretch it; she could feel the pain just fine without moving it. Still, the pain didn't really keep her from moving properly and the injuries themselves were mostly healed. A little bit of soreness was to be expected after having that many senbon driven into your body.

"So you're it, huh?" a voice called out behind her.

Sakura whirled around and groaned, not because of the complaints from her sore body – though there were some – but because of who was standing before her. The woman's smile was predatory, her clothing was at least a full step over the line of what could be considered modest (or tasteful), and her brown eyes promised something bad was about to happen.

What had Kakashi been thinking?! This was the person who was going to relate to Sakura as a woman?

Mitarashi Anko's grin grew larger as she recognized the look of horror on the younger woman's face. Sakura wouldn't have been at all surprised if it was the exact expression that she'd been hoping to get when she called out.

"H-hello, Anko – uh – sensei," Sakura said, trying to swallow her annoyance at Kakashi and her fear over what the next few days were going to hold.

"How's your body feeling?" Anko asked without preamble.

"I'm a little sore still," Sakura admitted.

"Hmm, tough shit, I don't go easy on people because they're sore," Anko informed her, her grin turning somewhat malicious, doubling Sakura's unease about the whole situation. "You'll have to either suck it up or die…"

At that moment, another person dropped from the sky, landing in a crouch next to Anko. The newcomer was wearing gray armor and armguards with a black, sleeveless shirt and pants as well as disconnected sleeves that came up to the middle of her bicep, leaving her shoulders exposed so that a spiral tattoo was visible. Her face was hidden behind what looked like a white cat mask with a curving red line on either cheek and down the middle of the forehead. Strapped to her back was a ninjaken, the weapon worn by all ANBU members. Her long purple hair was the only distinguishing feature that separated her from any other ANBU Sakura had ever seen.

"There's no need to be so crude, Anko," the ANBU said in a surprisingly gentle voice as she cocked her masked head to the side and gave Sakura the feeling that she was being closely examined.

"You got roped into this too, eh Yugao?" Anko asked with shake of her head. "Kakashi certainly went all out for this little princess."

Sakura bristled at the comment. "I'm not a _princess_."

Anko sauntered over to her and brushed a finger against her red dress. "Nice, fashionable dress," her hand squeezed Sakura's arm, "soft skin," she lifted Sakura's hand and inspected it, "minimal calluses, unchipped fingernails," finally she ran a hand through Sakura's short hair and took an exaggerated sniff, "and clean hair that was washed with… rose blossom shampoo? Are you _serious_?" She rolled her eyes and sighed, "I never should have let Kakashi talk me into this."

Yugao lifted her ANBU mask so that it was resting on top of her head and smiled kindly at Sakura. "Hello Sakura-chan, I'm Uzuki Yugao. Kakashi-sempai asked me to help you out with your taijutsu and perhaps ninjutsu if we have time."

"Like there's any point…" Anko grumbled.

Yugao winked at Sakura and whispered, "Don't mind her. She's been in a foul mood all day. There's nothing wrong with looking nice or" – she shot a meaningful glance at Anko – "_bathing_. Anko is just grumpy because she was up late working on her taxes and still didn't finish them."

"I was _not_ working on my taxes," Anko retorted and then added, "They aren't due until after the Chuunin Exam is over anyway."

"She also doesn't like to put things off," Yugao continued. "She's surprisingly responsible when it comes to things like that and is really quite good at math. Actually, there's a whole lot of stuff that you wouldn't think she'd like…"

"Alright, shut up!" Anko yelled. "Let's stop talking about my accounting skills and go train the little princess."

Yugao grinned at Sakura and winked again. "Well, Anko, if you really want to."

Anko's reply was not the sort of thing that a girl Sakura's age should have been hearing, but Yugao didn't seem to notice or mind the anatomical impossibility of the comment or the crassness of the other woman's behavior. Anko marched off in a huff while Sakura and Yugao followed at a slightly slower pace.

"Hayate-kun says he was very impressed with your match," Yugao told Sakura pleasantly as they walked towards the training grounds. "According to him, you've got a lot of potential and are a quick thinker."

Sakura smiled, feeling genuinely happy for the first time since Sasuke had told her that they would be fighting each other in the first round of the final test. Anko still scared her a little, but Uzuki Yugao seemed to be exactly the person she had hoped to get as a trainer. She was kind and beautiful and – since she was also a member of ANBU – probably very powerful. She was exactly the sort of kunoichi Sakura wanted to be someday.

From his place on a tree branch above the spot he'd told Sakura to meet her new teachers, Kakashi smiled as he watched the three women walking away. Yugao had suggested letting Sakura deal with Anko on her own for a few minutes anyway – which explained why she hadn't shown up as early as she normally did – but Kakashi hadn't sure how great of an idea it was to leave the most fragile of his students alone with someone like Anko. Still, he trust that Yugao knew what she was doing and accepted that she would be better able to see what a girl like Sakura needed to push her towards being stronger. Sakura seemed happy at the moment, so apparently he'd been right in going with Yugao's suggestion.

As the kunoichi rounded the corner, the purple haired ANBU glanced back over her shoulder and smiled at Kakashi who nodded his head to convey his thanks for her agreeing to help his student. Then she and Sakura were out of sight and Kakashi was on his way to continue Sasuke's training.

ooo

The man walked peacefully towards his destination, his eyes closed and his head slightly back so that the midday sun could warm his contented face. There was no need to hurry; the journey was half the fun… or _part_ of the fun, anyway. Plus, hurrying would make noise and noise disturb the harmony of the world around him. It was far too beautiful a day to do anything that would disturb it. It was much better to stay silent and unobtrusive.

The clicking of his geta against the cobblestone walkway was the only sound that he made and as he drew closer to his goal even that began to soften until it was completely unheard. Soon he was practically a wrath, a beautiful white haired shadow moving across the world without disturbing even the air he passed through.

Up ahead he could hear giggling and the smell of sulfurous steam tickled his nose. He smiled and ran a hand through his long white hair. It had been a long journey, but it would be worth it. As the small building came into view, he quickened his pace as much as possible without sacrificing his stealth. Peace and harmony were all fine and good, but the satisfying of certain urges and the enjoying of true beauty was hard to resist.

He passed over the small arched bridge and made his way to the bamboo walls of the closest building. Settling himself down amongst the bushes, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a notepad and peeked inside.

The sight before him was everything he could have hoped for. Some had ones that looked like large clusters of grapes ripening on a vine, others were more like apples, but just as delicious looking… there were even a few small watermelon to be found amongst the steam-filled room. He licked his lips and began to write as he watched the women inside walking around, their hips swaying provocatively. He watched them washing their hair, their arms, their breasts, their…

Jiraiya couldn't help it, the giggle slipped through his lips before he remembered the danger of making any noise that could be detected within. Fortunately, no one seemed to hear him, or if they did, they didn't mind being appreciated.

"Hey, Ero-Sennin, see anything good in there?" a voice asked from behind.

Jiraiya turned and found a blond boy grinning impishly up at him. For a moment, he almost thought he was seeing a ghost from the past, but the feeling passed quickly. "Keep it down, brat, whacha gonna do if I get caught?!"

The boy's grin grew larger and he put a hand on Jiraiya's shoulder so he could whisper into his ear better. "Me? I'll just disappear. The real question is: what are you going to do?" Then he opened his mouth and yelled, "Pervert! Peeper!"

Jiraiya took a swing at the blond; hoping to silence the blond before too much damage was done, but before his fist could connect the blond's hands came together and he vanished in a puff of smoke.

The Sanin's eyes widened in surprise. It hadn't been a substitution jutsu, because nothing had been substituted, and it wasn't just a regular clone because it had touched him and had a physical body. The blond had been nothing but a shadow clone from the beginning.

"There he is!"

Jiraiya turned and found a small mob of mostly nude women glaring angrily at him, several with their hands curled into fists. He wished for a second that he had time to make a note about this as a good idea for his next book popped into his head, but he would just have to try to remember it later.

"Now ladies," he said with his best smile, "there's no need to get angry at me. I just stopped the person who was peeping at you! He ran off just before you got here…"

"Yeah right!" the woman in front growled. Jiraiya's eyes noted the way the water from the springs made her brown hair cling to her neck as tiny droplets ran down between the swell of her large breasts, disappearing beneath the towel. The woman took a step forward and his eyes began to glaze over as he watched her large breasts bounce and the knot of the towel loosened. If he could get her to take another couple of steps, she'd probably lose the towel all together… now _that_ would be inspiration!

She didn't take another step, however, instead she threw a wooden bucket at his head, inciting a hail of similar objects to be thrown by the other women present.

Jiraiya decided that inspiration would have to wait and quickly beat a hasty retreat, vowing revenge on the blond jackass that had ruined his perfect day.

ooo

Naruto grinned as he watched Jiraiya's flight from above. Ero-sennin was obviously enjoying this too much or he would have left the women in the dust long ago. No doubt there would be a scene in his next book that featured poor Jio being hunted by an angry mob of naked women after some ridiculous (and funny) situation resulted in him offending them all.

Perhaps he would accidentally end up in the women's bath and mistakenly grab a boob while looking for an exit… or had Jiraiya already used that one? It was hard to remember, Naruto hadn't gotten a chance to read any of the _Icha Icha_ books in a while, even before he was transported back in time. It sounded like something Jiraiya would write, though perhaps just a simple boob-grab would be too tame for his taste and Jio's aim would be a little _lower_.

For a brief moment, Naruto wondered if what he was planning to do was very wise. '_Probably not_,' he concluded. He'd spent a few hours talking with Sarutobi and Kakashi the night before, giving them information about what he remembered happening in his timeline, both during the Chuunin Exam and immediately after, but also trying to gleam from them any hints that things were not what they should have been if he was in his own past. He'd probably listened more closely to every word coming out of their mouths than he ever had before, but he hadn't found one contradiction with what he knew of his own past.

Despite the lack of evidence, there was still no way of telling if this Jiraiya was the same as the one from his own reality (assuming he was actually in a _different_ reality). This Jiraiya could be the power hungry member of the Sannin. He could be the one who was out to destroy Konoha and kill the Third. Or maybe he was loyal, but not as skilled as his counterpart had been. Maybe he wasn't the one who trained Naruto's father – though no one had contradicted Naruto when he'd offered up that information to the Third and Kakashi – or maybe he didn't actually like Naruto's father the way he had in Naruto's original timeline. Naruto couldn't ask specific questions about those sorts of things without letting on his concerns about the reality he was in, but he could drop hints or side references to those events and wait for them to tell him he was wrong.

Neither of them did.

The blond closed his eyes and sighed. There was no way for him to really know for sure what he was getting himself into. He would just have to do what his gut was telling him and his gut said that he should trust Jiraiya. Probably that had less to do with the lack of contradictory information and more to do with the fact that while he knew who his real father was, Jiraiya had been the closest he'd ever gotten to the real thing… though perhaps grandfather would have been a more accurate description. Regardless, he loved the old man and he'd missed him over the years. Even if Jiraiya was the Orochimaru of this timeline, Naruto might still have gone down and talked to him, just so he could feel that bond again.

Jiraiya rounded a corner, momentarily out of sight of the mob, and Naruto decided to step in so he could get things moving before he started second guessing himself. A clone appeared next to him, transformed into the Toad Sennin and dropped down into the path of the oncoming women, leading them away from Jiraiya. With that trouble out of the way, Naruto himself leapt from the building and landed next to his mentor from the past.

Not unexpectedly, Jiraiya did not look pleased to see him. "You've got some nerve showing up after the stunt you just pulled."

"Hey, I got those girls off your back," Naruto pointed out.

"I _know_!" Jiraiya yelled. "Do you have any idea how close some of them were to losing their towels?"

"Come on Ero-sennin," Naruto said with a sigh and a shake of his head, "I'll show you a hot girl if you follow me."

Jiraiya looked skeptical, but followed anyway. It wasn't like he could go back to that bathhouse now and there was a chance that news of a peeper would have spread. It would be better to lie low for a few hours before going back and continuing his research. Besides, if this boy was who Jiraiya thought he was, he had plenty of reason to follow… for now.

"Why do you keep calling me that?" he asked as Naruto led him towards one of the training grounds.

"Ero-sennin?" Naruto shrugged, he honestly couldn't even remember where the name had specifically come from, though it wasn't hard to guess. Whatever Jiraiya had been doing when he'd earned the nickname, it had been perverted. "That's what I've always called you."

"Do you even know who I am?"

"Oh," Naruto's voice changed to a decent – if slightly higher pitched – imitation of Jiraiya's, "You mean: From the North to the South, from the West to the East, babies cry in my presence and men drool over my books… I am the White Maned Toad Charmer; the slightly pompous ninja who makes women cover their chests in fear. The amazing, handsome, and amazing again: Jiraiya-sama!"

Jiraiya's fist came down on top of Naruto's head and the blond's knees buckled. A slightly bemused expression crossed the older ninja's face as he looked down at Naruto while the young man slowly picked himself up out of the dirty street. "You really shouldn't make fun of people as amazing as me," the Toad Sennin informed him.

Naruto shook his head to clear the stars in front of his eyes and then smiled. "Sorry, it's how I'm used to talking to you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'll tell you when we get to the training grounds."

And so the two of them walked in near silence to one of the training. Jiraiya wasn't sure why he was going along with it, but he'd been called home – the first time he'd bothered responding to one of the old man's attempts at communication in years – to look at the seal on his student's son's stomach, and this boy was a spitting image of Minato. Perhaps if he took a look real quick, he could get out of the village without being spotted by any of the higher ups. It would be pretty simple, except for the fact that the kid kept bugging him by staring at him with a fond expression on his face.

When they finally reached the training ground, Jiraiya crossed his arms and looked down at Naruto. "Alright, we're here. So how do you know me?"

In answer, Naruto lifted his hand as blue chakra swirled around in it until it formed a perfect ball.

Whatever Jiraiya had been expecting, this was not it. His mouth fell open and his eyes widened. "Rasengan," he whispered.

"My father's personal jutsu," Naruto smiled. "You taught it to me a little over a month from now, while we were looking for Tsunade-baachan."

"That doesn't make any sense."

Naruto sighed as the Rasengan vanished. "This is the third time I've had this conversation, and I still don't think I've figured out the best way to do it, but here goes… I'm not a little kid… or rather, I am a little kid, but I didn't used to be. I have memories from about twenty years in the future where I was temporary Hokage—"

"There's no such thing," Jiraiya interrupted. "You're either Hokage or you aren't."

"So I've been told, but apparently they made a new rule when a jinchuriki was handed the hat after…" Naruto paused and shook his head before switching back to what he'd been saying, "I was _temporary_ Hokage. Orochimaru and Otogakure had been taking over villages and countries left and right, he had just about the whole continent under his control, and in the end we weren't nearly as strong as we are now. They overran us. I tried to fight him, but he beat me… killed me, maybe… and then I woke up on the day that I'd graduated from the Academy. I was confused and uncoordinated as all hell, but I really am from the future."

Jiraiya pursed his lips and then shook his head. "I must have hit you harder than I thought…"

Naruto scowled. "Look, this isn't a joke, alright? I need you to believe me because I need your help. Kakashi-sensei and the old man already know, but I need you or things might still get messed up."

"What do you want from me?"

"For one thing, I want your summon contract," Naruto replied with a grin, "it's been annoying not being able to call on Gamakichi and Gamatatsu when I need them for something."

"Gamatatsu?" Jiraiya asked, momentarily forgetting the impossibility of what Naruto was claiming, "That little idiot? All he does is eat!"

Naruto looked confused for a second and then frowned, "Oh yeah, they're still just kids, aren't they? Well, I might need Gamabunta, so I still want that scroll."

Jiraiya stared hard at Naruto, looking for some hint that the boy was lying. "What you are saying is impossible," he said at last. "You can't go back in time."

Naruto returned his stare. "Apparently, they changed the rules on that one too." He brought his fingers together, creating a clone of himself and said, "I'm going to show you something that I never got the chance to show you in the future. I actually really wanted to show it to you, but you…" his voice trailed off. He hadn't liked talking about Jiraiya's death back in his original timeline and he didn't really want to talk about it now. "Well, you never got to see it." He held out his hand once more as chakra began to swirl within it. The clone next to him pumped its hands as it worked to manipulate the elemental nature of the chakra while Naruto once again formed the ball. It spun tighter and tighter even as it grew larger and larger while more chakra was pumped into it. Eventually the turning began to form four little arms that gradually gave the jutsu the appearance from which its name was derived.

Jiraiya's eyes widened in shock. "That's…"

"I called it: Rasenshuriken," Naruto told him. "My wind nature, mixed with the Rasengan."

He held it for a second longer to make sure that Jiraiya could see it was no mistake and no illusion and then he slowed the spin and let the chakra simply dissipate into thin air. "Do you believe me now?"

"No," Jiraiya replied evenly, though a small smile formed on his lips, "but you've convinced me to keep an open mind."

Naruto spent the next several hours trying to convince the Toad Sennin that he really was from the future. They ran through different taijutsu forms that Jiraiya had taught him, ninjutsu that were supposed to be secrets (some of which were still being developed at that point), and talking about things they would have done in the future together. Finally they got to the point where Jiraiya was willing to get the contract out and let Naruto sign it – though Naruto suspected this had more to do with his father than the convincing nature of his arguments – so that, at long last, he was once again able to summon the toads who had been his friends and allies for so many years.

He wasted not time in summoning both Gamakichi and Gamatatsu to reintroduce himself. It was actually hard to hold himself back and only summon such little toads. He was used to needing far more chakra to bring them out after they'd grown to a much larger (and more useful) size. The two were as friendly, annoying, and hungry as ever and he eventually dismissed them and summoned a slightly larger one to make sure that Jiraiya could see how easily he could control the summoning jutsu. He didn't, however, call out Gamabunta. Much as he liked the old toad, they were too close to the rest of the village and Gamabunta had never been one to let himself be ordered around. Naruto didn't remember everything about his first encounters with Jiraiya, but he remembered riding the enormous toad around while trying to convince him to accept him as a summoner (since 'master' was totally out of the question). They could deal with that mess – and trying to explain the situation, if it came down to it – to Gamabunta at another time.

After watching Naruto's demonstration of the summoning jutsu, Jiraiya claimed that he was supposed to go and meet Sarutobi (a meeting he was sort of making up, since the Third didn't technically know that he was in the village yet). He still refused to admit that he believed the time travel story, but that seemed to be more out of a desire to be obstinate than anything else. Naruto was fine with his mentor being stubborn (it wouldn't have been the same Jiraiya if he wasn't) and felt relieved that, so near as he could tell, Jiraiya at least was the same as he'd been in the original past. As it stood, however, he'd spent all of his time trying to convince Jiraiya of the authenticity of his claim and hadn't really gotten to lay out what he was hoping Jiraiya would help him with.

As if reading Naruto's mind, Jiraiya paused before leaving, glanced over his shoulder, and said, "Meet me here tomorrow morning… we'll talk more then."

Naruto nodded eagerly. "I'll be here, Ero-sennin."

The older ninja rolled his eyes. "Are you ever going to stop calling me that?"

The blond grinned. "Not even after you're long gone."

Jiraiya blew out an annoyed breath and then began walking towards the Hokage Tower. Just before he was out of earshot Naruto heard him mutter, "Brat never even showed me that sexy girl he promised…"

ooo

Sasuke hurt all over. He'd spent years training himself above and beyond what they were teaching in the Academy, he'd pushed himself until his muscles burned and he was covered from head to toe in sweat, but he'd never gone through something like what Kakashi had put him through during the past day and a half. The man was on a mission to find his every flaw and stamp it out… and he'd started with the Sharingan.

It had happened shortly after they finished talking with Sakura and Naruto headed out to find Iruka. Sasuke had been forced to go and see a medic-nin who had healed his wounds from his match as best she could and then he and Kakashi had found a quiet training spot to start working.

"Activate your Sharingan," Kakashi had commanded. Sasuke had immediately obeyed. "These eyes, I'm sure you know, will let you track and even memorize any movement. With some practice you'll eventually get to the point where you can mimic what you're seeing so fast that it looks like you are actually moving before the person you're copying, but there's something you need to realize about them." He balled his hand into a fist and his eyes took on a dangerous glint. "Sasuke, I'm going to hit you in the stomach, about five centimeters below your solar plexus. With your Sharingan, you should be able to see me and you already know where I'm aiming. I want you to block my punch. Do you understand?"

Sasuke had grinned at the time, thinking such a thing to be easy. With what Kakashi had told him and the Sharingan's insights into his teacher's movements, it would be nearly impossible for his sensei to move faster than he could see and anything he could see, he could block… or so he'd thought.

Kakashi had drawn back his fist, rushed forward, and delivered a crushing blow to Sasuke's stomach right where he'd said he would. Sasuke had seen it all happening, he'd even been able to spot the malicious glint in Kakashi's eye just before he threw the punch, but his body couldn't move fast enough to do anything about it.

That, Kakashi explained as Sasuke struggled to breathe, was the danger of a Sharingan. It made you feel powerful because you could see so much, but it did not actually make you physically faster or stronger. All it gave you was the chance to see your death coming; it didn't necessarily give you the skill to evade it.

And so they had spent the rest of that day and now most of the second day working on Sasuke's speed. From time to time Kakashi would have them stop, let Sasuke get his breathing under control and then give him the same test that he'd given originally, though he stopped telling Sasuke where the blow was going to be aimed and he seemed to pull his punch more than he had that first time when he was trying to make a point. Twice Sasuke had nearly blocked it, but both times he was still a fraction of second too late and was sent crashing to the ground.

Despite his student's failure to block his punches, Kakashi seemed pleased with his progress. "Tomorrow," he said as they took a short breather between speed training sessions, "we'll start working on your taijutsu as well. That will be easier for you since all you'll really be doing is copying my form with your Sharingan, but after you've copied it you'll have to reproduce it while we spar… I won't go easy on you."

The last part was added with just a hint of threat, but it only made Sasuke smile. If Kakashi kept pushing him like this, he would come out of this month long break far stronger than he'd been before. Then he'd show Naruto and everyone else what it meant to be an Uchiha.

It would get him that much closer to Itachi.

"Once you've mastered the taijutsu, I might teach you a new jutsu…" The jounin gave Sasuke an appraising look, sighed softly, and then added, "_If_ I decide that you are ready to learn this ninjutsu, you have to promise me that you will not use it on your teammates. Not during the Chuunin Exam, not while you are sparring, not _ever_. Do you understand?"

Sasuke frowned at the question and nodded. He had no idea why Kakashi would be making such a big deal out of it. Of course he would never use anything on his teammates that could potentially kill them! He wasn't some sort of monster like his brother. During the Chuunin Exam he would fight them with everything he had because that was what they were supposed to be doing and that was what he was going to expect of them in return, but he wouldn't try to do any permanent damage the way Kakashi seemed to be cautioning him against.

"I understand," he replied.

Kakashi looked down at him for a few more seconds and then said. "Okay, break's over. Let's get back to work."

When the training finally came to an end, Kakashi sent Sasuke on his way. The Uchiha stumbled a little as he dragged his tired body back towards his apartment, but it didn't take long for his stamina to return and he was glad for the heaviness of his limbs and the burning of his muscles. Being tired like that only meant that he was training himself to the point where he was going to grow much stronger. Despite his fatigue, when he got home, he intended to spend at least another hour or two training by himself before he took a shower and went to bed.

He wanted to be ready for the Exam, but more than that, he wanted to be ready for Itachi.

Kakashi did not leave the training grounds even after his student was out of sight. He stood calmly in the middle of the field watching the shadows grow longer until finally he glanced to the side and said, "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

Naruto stepped out of the foliage and shrugged. "He'll probably need it at some point no matter what happens."

"You said he nearly killed you with a Chidori when you were kids," Kakashi reminded him needlessly. "Why do you want me to teach it to him again?"

Naruto stared at the spot where his friend had disappeared from view. "He might need it if things get rough. He's probably going to fight Gaara, unless the invasion starts before then. I don't know if he'd survive that fight without it and I don't want to take any chances."

"It might be better for everyone if he didn't survive," Kakashi pointed out in a quit voice, not liking what he was saying, but knowing it was still the truth.

Naruto shook his head. "Not for me… or for you and Sakura, for that matter. He's the closest thing I ever had to a brother. I would have taken him back without a second thought in the future if he'd somehow been able to get away from Orochimaru. Besides, this Sasuke is different. He's better friends with Sakura and he sees me as more of an equal, so our rivalry isn't as emotional as it was. I don't think he'd go with Orochimaru even if he was offered power at this point."

"And you want us to keep giving him power here so the offer is even less appealing," Kakashi noted.

"Something like that. He'll have to face Itachi sooner or later. The stronger he is when it happens, the better his chances are of getting his revenge and coming back to us."

Kakashi nodded. "Plus we're going to have to deal with Akatsuki and Orochimaru eventually."

Naruto sighed. "Yeah."

"We'll all be ready to help you when the time comes," Kakashi promised.

Naruto closed his eyes and tried to push out the images of the deaths of his friends that he'd witnessed over the years, especially those that had happened during the fight against Akatsuki. "I know," he whispered, trying to keep the dread out of his voice.

ooo

The Third Hokage leaned forward in his seat and folded his hands in front of him as he blew out a ring of pipe smoke. "So, what's your opinion?" he asked the man standing across from him.

Jiraiya shrugged. "He says he's from the future, but that's impossible. He's either a liar or crazy or both."

Sarutobi stared at his former pupil for a moment, puffing softly on his pipe, and then smiled knowingly. "You believe him."

Jiraiya dropped his head, rubbed across his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand. "He's got my fingerprints all over him," he replied with what sounded suspiciously like a moan. "Taijutsu, ninjutsu… I'd swear I'd been teaching him everything I could for a couple of years, at least, except I'm pretty sure I haven't even spoken with him until today… unless you count baby-talk when he was first born. Him being a time traveler sounds like one of my more outlandish ideas for a book, but I don't have any other explanation for it. He preformed the summoning jutsu perfectly only _thirty_ seconds after signing the contract! Even Minato wasn't that good that fast. Not only that, but he knew the names of the toads he was summoning and called exactly the ones he was looking for." He paused and shook his head. "I'm still not saying I believe him, but I sure as hell don't have any other explanations for what he can do."

The two were silent for a moment and then Sarutobi said, "Why didn't you ever take guardianship of Naruto?"

Jiraiya's head shot up and he glared his old sensei. "Why didn't you?"

"You know why."

"And you know why I didn't," the Sannin shot back. "Someone had to keep tabs on Orochimaru. I couldn't stop him from leaving, but at least I could try to make sure he didn't cause any more harm to Konoha."

The Third's eyes softened as he set his pipe aside. "Orochimaru's defection was not your fault."

Jiraiya snorted and turned away. "Could you really imagine _me_ as a father?"

Sarutobi lips turned up in the smile that a proud father reserves for a beloved son. "You would have done a splendid job, just like you did with Minato."

"There's a difference between babysitting a kid and raising one."

"Yes, but you never seemed to see it. Even when you were _babysitting_, you always took more interest in your students than was normal…"

Jiraiya shook his head. "And look where it got me."

"Perhaps you are getting a second chance."

Jiraiya's chest shook with a swallowed chuckle. "He's thirteen… or _thirty_, depending on how you look at it."

"Even a grown man needs a father from time to time… and Naruto needs you."

"He was the Hokage," Jiraiya counted, well aware of the fact that he was speaking as if he accepted Naruto's outlandish claims.

"No," Sarutobi said with a small shake of his head and sigh, "he wasn't, but intend to rectify that future oversight. I want you to make him into the sort of Hokage his father was… the sort of Hokage you could have been."

Jiraiya rolled his eyes. "Not this again. I told you, I'm not interested in your job."

"I have someone else in mind now."

"Who? Naruto? If you thought the council had trouble accepting him in the future, just think how they'll feel about him as a man stuck in a kid's body! Nothing personal old man, but you're going to have to step down as Hokage before the brat is old enough."

Sarutobi smiled knowingly. "I was referring to Tsunade, actually."

"You'd be better off with Naruto," Jiraiya replied with a snort.

"He doesn't think so."

"He's just a kid."

"We can't keep changing how we describe him when it suits our arguments," Sarutobi chuckled. "He can't be a thirty year old Hokage in one argument and a child the next. Naruto is – impossible as it seems – an adult. He was very nearly the Hokage of this village, though he was probably not properly prepared for the position, and he knew Tsunade almost as long as you and I did before she left the village. He saw her as Hokage, he knows the sort of job she'll do."

"I still can't believe that we're just taking his word for it."

Sarutobi leaned back in his chair and picked up his pipe. "Why do you think I wanted to meet with you _after_ you'd had a chance to speak with him?" he asked as he began puffing on the pipe again. "I knew what I felt, but I wanted your opinion since he claims the two of you spent so much time together. Not all of his facts are accurate, but much of what he knows and says would be difficult for a child, even a well placed spy, to learn and know. And most of his inaccuracies seem to deal with events that have occurred since he woke up in the past and began changing things. There are a few points that seem peculiarly off for no explainable reason, but far too many that are dead on to just dismiss his claim."

"So what do you want me to do with him?"

The old man's eyebrows rose as though the question were an odd one. "Why, train him, of course. Figure out what he knows, what he doesn't know, and make him stronger. Keep your eyes and ears on him in case he gives any indication that he's being less than honest, but more than anything… spend time with him. He's the son of Minato, it will be good for you to get to know him and it will be good for him to learn anything that your future self didn't teach him. If we are going to turn him into a Hokage, he'll need you to show him how to do it right."

"Is this what he told you?"

"No, though I could tell he wanted to meet up with you again. The idea of having you help prepare him to become Hokage is purely my own. Beyond that, however, I'm hoping that he will help relieve you of some of your guilt. You never forgave yourself of Minato's death just like you never forgave yourself for Orochimaru's betrayal, perhaps spending time with Naruto will help with both."

"If that's what you want, maybe _you_ should spend some time with him."

Sarutobi smiled. "I don't feel guilty for Orochimaru's betrayal… only sad that I did not see it coming and was unwilling to stop it."

The two were silent for a long time and then Jiraiya began to head for the door. When he reached it, he paused and looked back. "I'm not saying I like it, but I'll spend some time with the kid and see what happens. It's probably just a big joke anyway."

"Just stay away from the bathhouses; I'd appreciate not having too many incidents like the one today."

Jiraiya smiled mischievously. "If we go back for more research, I'll be sure we use Touton no Jutsu. If the kid is who he says he is, I would have taught that one too him pretty early on."

Sarutobi returned the smile. "Yes, it was a very effective jutsu that you invented. Perhaps you should have Naruto teach you his Sexy no Jutsu, I'm sure you'd enjoy that one almost as much."

The Sannin nodded and opened the door. "I'll keep it in mind," he promised and then he was gone.

Sarutobi continued looking at the doors for a moment longer and then lifted his eyes to look up at the pictures of the Hokages. His gaze rested on those of his former friends and mentors for several seconds and then drifted to that of the man who was both his successor and predecessor. "Don't worry, Jiraiya will take care of Naruto," he promised the picture, "and hopefully Naruto will take care of Jiraiya as well."

o

o

A/N: Wow, it was such a relief to write this chapter. I've really kind of had to force myself to sit down and finish up the last two – I just wasn't feeling it for some reason – but this one was must easier. Hopefully the fact that the only big thing that happened in this chapter was Jiraiya's arrival on the scene and the explanation of who all would be training the members of Team Seven didn't make it too boring. Those things maybe weren't terribly exciting, but they were important as we start heading towards the final part of the Exam.

Yugao, for those who didn't recognize her, is a canon character. She's Hayate's girlfriend who is a member of ANBU (obviously). She shows up during the Invasion arc and also goes to the cenotaph where Kakashi is during the Third's funeral. She apparently served under Kakashi when he was an ANBU captain, hence his ability to call on her when he needs a favor here.

The conversation between Sakura, Anko and Yugao comes from a conversation I had with Philzpilz in which he said he thought the story could use more Anko even if all she wasn't really doing anything important (throwing dango sticks, walking around in her typical outfit, scaring kids, and _doing taxes_ were all declared cool… and I had to agree). Hopefully everyone found the conversation funny and, Phil, I hope you appreciate Kakashi's choice in training instructors for Sakura (and talk of Anko doing taxes).

Anyway, thanks – as always – for the reviews. I'm glad most of you seem to be really enjoying the story. Please review so I have something to read when I try to get out of doing wedding work!

Just to be clear…

This week: Chapter (obviously since you just read it, unless you like skipping down and reading author's notes for some reason)

Next week: No chapter

Week after that: No chapter

Week after _that_: Maybe a chapter, but don't bet the farm on it (actually, never bet the farm on me doing something… I don't think I could handle that kind of pressure).

Week after _THAT_: There sure as heck better be a chapter!

Ninjaken – Also known as a "shinobi katana." This is a slightly shorter than normal katana that is traditionally supposed to be used by ninja. As such, just about every ANBU member that has appeared in canon has had one strapped to his or her back (or been using it).

Geta – Traditional Japanese footwear with a wooden base that keeps the foot above the ground. Basically they look a little like flip-flops, but have two blocks of wood across the bottom to give them some extra height.

Touton no Jutsu – "Transparent Escape Technique." This is a technique that Jiraiya mentions during a flashback to his own childhood when he was the one left tied to the stump after the bell test. He created it so that he could better peep on women and the Third (who was probably not Hokage at the time) offered to come with him so he could see how well the technique worked… yeah right! ;)

Sexy no Jutsu – Technically this one should be called "Oiroke no Jutsu" since all other jutsu are in Japanese, but I've usually seen it translated like this and for some reason the Japanese just doesn't feel right to me… Anyway, it's just Henge, but Naruto turns into a mostly (or totally) naked girl.


	31. Chapter 30

Chapter 30

o

They were so easy to follow, it was almost comical. One in an orange outfit the other with a red vest and long, spiky white hair. Gaara doubted he would have had trouble following them from twice as far back. The tall one with the white hair was an unknown quantity, but he moved like a ninja and that was enough to put Gaara on guard. Uzumaki Naruto had already proven himself quite capable in their two brief encounters, adding an older ninja to the mix would make things slightly more difficult. Two ninja, whose physical appearances ran counter to any desire to remain hidden, wandering down the street speaking loudly and occasionally laughing, pushing, or hitting each other was so out of place with what a ninja should be that Gaara was certain it was a ruse of some sort.

The Suna genin slowed his pace to remain hidden within a small group of people as his prey paused for a moment to argue about something. Gaara was too far away and the street was too noisy for him to overhear exactly what was being said, but there was a fair amount of cursing on both sides and something about the older one being a pervert.

After a small scuffle, the two resumed their walk. Naruto was sulking now, but the older man seemed to have cheered up a bit. He even went so far as to place his hand on Naruto's head and gave the blond locks an almost affectionate tussle.

Gaara's eyes narrowed at this and he found his right hand curling into a fist of its own volition. How was it that Naruto was treated like this? He'd said they were the same, and he'd dropped plenty of hints as to _how_ they were the same, but no one seemed to fear him. Gaara had seen a few of the glances cast towards Naruto, so he knew that the blond wasn't universally loved in the village – in fact, many adults seemed to greatly dislike him – but he still had several people who did not shy away from his company and at least one who had claimed that he would fight to keep Naruto alive.

A little boy chased a ball across Gaara's path and nearly died as a result. Only the presence of so many others kept the Suna genin from crushing the apologizing pest as he retrieved the ball and threw it back towards his friends while an older man berated him for running into the street. The other children gave the boy a funny look but Gaara didn't pay them any mind, he was too fixated on a very important question that he just couldn't seem to shake:

If Naruto really had something monstrous inside him, why wasn't he living a similar life to the one Gaara had always known?

Gaara pondered this as he followed the two ninja away from the main roads and towards one of the many training areas. Unfortunately the one they'd chosen had a large field surrounded by forest. The two of them walked calmly across the open area and disappeared into the woods on the far side. It would be impossible for Gaara to follow them without being far more obvious about it unless he made his way around the edges.

As he began to walk slowly through the woods so as to remain concealed, he couldn't help but wonder if they hadn't spotted him tailing them and chosen this area as a means of giving him the slip. From what he'd observed, that would be the sort of thing Uzumaki Naruto might do.

Not that it really mattered. At some point, he was going to find Naruto and then he was going to kill him.

ooo

"So, will you do it?" Naruto asked as he and Jiraiya sat down on two fallen logs in the little wooded area that surrounded the training grounds they'd chosen.

"She won't come back; I don't know why you and the old man are so obsessed with this."

Naruto leaned his foot forward so he could pull at a piece of grass with his toes and smiled. "The village needs her."

"This village needs a lot of things, but Tsunade ain't one of them."

"She'll be a great Hokage, you'll see."

Jiraiya shook his head. "Assuming I agree to go find her, what am I supposed to do to convince her to come back? She didn't leave just for kicks and giggles, you know."

The blond nodded. "You'll just have to use your charming personality, I guess."

"Oh?" Jiraiya laughed. "Is that all it will take? My 'charming personality'? Well, geez, after I get done convincing her to become Hokage, maybe I'll talk the sun into rising in the west so it doesn't shine in my window in the morning or perhaps I'll get the rain to start tasting like sake because I'm tired of water!"

Naruto sighed. "You can do it. You'll whine and bitch about it, but in the end, you'll get the job done. The village needs a Hokage and Sarutobi can't do it forever, she's probably the only one who can really do the job."

Jiraiya's lips pulled back in a sneering smile. "_You_ seem to think you could handle it."

"Me?" Naruto nearly laughed. "I was probably the worst Hokage ever, temporary or not. I'll take the job again someday, but not until I'm more prepared for it… and probably not until half the current council is dead and buried."

Jiraiya plucked a leaf from a low hanging branch and twirled it idly between his fingers. "She won't listen to me. She won't come."

Naruto smiled. "You might be the only one she _will_ listen to. What happened before was too specific and coincidental for me to repeat it properly; I don't even know if I remember it all. Plus, Orochimaru had to attack the village first and kill Sarutobi… no, I can't do it this time. It _has_ to be you. She loves you."

The leaf fell from Jiraiya's fingers and he looked down at the blond sharply. "If you were older, I'd think you were drunk…" He paused, gave Naruto a suspicious look, and then asked, "You aren't drunk, are you?"

Naruto smiled. "Not at the moment, but there are times where it gets real tempting."

"Tsuande-hime _doesn't_ love me, she…"

"Turned you down left and right when you were younger?" Naruto supplied with a grin, "I know. That's where you got the idea for your books."

Jiraiya looked startled for a second. "How did you… oh, right, I guess I probably would have told you in the future."

"Actually, she did," Naruto replied with a sigh. "You… you died just after she promised not to say 'no' anymore. I don't know if she ever even got the chance to tell you that." The blond looked down at the grass his toes were playing with and sighed. "You dying… it just about killed Tsunade-baachan. With you gone, she'd lost every man she ever really loved: her grandfather and his brother, her dad, the Third, her brother, that Dan guy… and then you. How many people can someone like her lose before it gets to be too much? And I… I said something I shouldn't have after I found out what happened to you. I told her that if you'd been Hokage, you wouldn't have sent her on such a shitty mission." Naruto was quiet for a moment, thinking back on probably the single most hurtful thing he'd ever said to someone and then shook the memory away. "The way she's living right now, it's beneath her. She's not the sort of person who should be wandering around in a drunken stupor gambling away every ryou she's ever made… You _have_ to do this. You're literally the only one who has any shot of convincing her at this point."

Jiraiya folded his arms across his chest and let his chin drop as his eyes closed in resignation. "I can't figure out why I'm letting myself believe the crap that keeps coming out of your mouth."

"It probably doesn't hurt that I look like my dad," Naruto pointed out.

"Yeah, probably," Jiraiya agreed. "Okay, fine, I'll try."

"Don't try. Do it. I don't know what's going on or why Orochimaru wasn't who he was supposed to be in the second test, but there's no way he isn't out there plotting the destruction of this village."

"I don't suppose you remember where she is."

"We didn't go looking for her for another month, so I don't know if she's where we found her or not. Even if she is, I don't really remember the name of the place, but it had a cool castle… until you Sannin destroyed it." Naruto thought about it for a moment and then said, "It probably had something to do with gambling or maybe it was just a place where you could gamble… but you already know that, it's Tsunade-baachan, after all: The Legendary Sucker."

Jiraiya grinned at his friend's nickname and turned his eyes in the direction of the gate he'd be passing through when he went off on the idiotic quest he was letting himself get talked into. "Anything else I should know about?"

"Nothing that comes to mind… be careful though, since Orochimaru isn't doing what I remember him doing, there's no telling what he's up to." Naruto looked down at his dirty jacket, contemplated his next request, and sighed. "But, um, when you're out there… if you find an orange and black jacket that would fit someone about 20 cm or so taller than me... pick it up for me, would you? I want one with black sleeves, and a black stripe running along the zipper, with orange panels," he pointed to either side of his stomach up to about mid-chest level, "here and here."

Jiraiya gave the blond a quizzical look and chuckled. "Am I supposed to be going out on a fool's errand to find the next Hokage, or just doing your shopping?

Naruto's foot found a rock on the ground and began to push it in circles to help expel some of his nervous energy. "It's kind of important to me," he admitted, "but only if it comes from you." He glanced at Jiraiya, saw the older ninja's expression, and then looked away quickly. "Forget it," he said with a sniffle as he rubbed underneath his nose, "it was just a dumb jacket… it wasn't that important."

Jiraiya was quiet for a long time and then he asked, "I gave it to you?"

The blond chuckled softly and shook his head at his own stupidity. "Kind of silly, huh? I mean, I liked it and all, but after it got destroyed while I was fighting Madara… I think I cried almost as much over that stupid jacket as I did when I found out you were… you know…"

Again a long silence settled over the two and, again, Jiraiya was the one to break it. "Man, who would have thought that a student of mine would be such a crybaby?"

Naruto scowled. "Shut up! You're lucky I'm in the middle of reminiscing about all our good times in the future or I'd kick your ass!"

"Pft, as if you could."

"You're pushing it, old man," Naruto growled between clenched teeth.

Jiraiya shrugged. "Like I care. I don't even really like you."

Naruto's fingers came together. "Sexy no Jutsu!" He vanished in a cloud of smoke and was replaced by a tall, leggy blond that had plenty of curves in all the right places and no clothing to hide any of said places.

Jiraiya's eyes bulged and his mouth fell open as a small trickle of drool spilled down over his bottom lip. "Hey! I like you A LOT!" he said, giving the blond two thumbs-up.

The transformed Naruto giggled girlishly. "Then you're going to like this even better."

The naked blonde leapt at Jiraiya, twisting in the air and sending a powerful kick at his head. The old lecher practically laughed as he blocked the attack easily and pushed the girl away. "Too weak, too slow. You're right; you would have been a crappy Hokage…"

Two Narutos dropped down from the trees on either side of Jiraiya and transformed into naked women, latching onto his arms and calling out his name in voices that implied a feeling of ecstasy simply from uttering the word "Jiraiya-sama." Jiraiya wasn't caught off guard by the appearance of the shadow clones, he'd known they were following from the moment he and Naruto met up that morning, but the lust in their voices was enough to make him blink in surprise.

At that moment, the first blonde's fist slammed into his stomach with enough force to double him over.

"Who's weak and slow now?" she asked with a soft giggle.

Jiraiya's own fist caught her under the chin and lifted her off her feet as she transformed back into Naruto in mid-flight. "Still you."

Naruto flipped once in the air and landed easily on his feet, a grin on his face. "Watch yourself, Ero-Sennin," he warned, "I'd hate to have to get serious on you."

Jiraiya snorted. "That's my line."

The grin on Naruto's face slowly faded. He blinked once and then bit his lip. "I missed you," he admitted.

Jiraiya wasn't sure how to respond to that. He liked the blond a lot, and not just because of his father, but he'd only met the boy the day before. His feelings simply weren't as deep as Naruto's were for him. In an effort to move away from that uncomfortable subject, he cleared his throat and asked. "What are you going to do while I'm gone?"

Naruto shrugged, also happy for the new subject. "Same as always: keep an eye on Sasuke, help him get stronger, try to push people onto a better path than they took last time."

"You're too hung up on him."

"He's my friend," Naruto replied with a glare. He'd already gone through this with Kakashi and he didn't really like the fact that the older ninja in his life all seemed to be thinking the same thing once they knew a bit of what the future held.

"Orochimaru was my friend," Jiraiya shot back, "look where it got me."

Naruto scowled. "Sasuke's different."

"No," Jiraiya replied with a sigh, "he's not. You just don't want to admit it. It would be better if you just took him out instead of messing around like this."

Naruto rounded on Jiraiya, his hand balling into a fist. "I can't accept that!" he yelled louder than he meant to. "Sasuke's a good person. He just… he just needs something to keep him from only focusing on getting powerful enough to kill his brother."

Jiraiya had never been one to back down from a fight, especially not one that he was certain he was going to win. "He's already completely focused on that! He'll betray you again the second he sees a way to get the power he's lusting after."

The two stared at each other for a moment and then Naruto turned away. "You're wrong."

Jiraiya sighed again and shook his head at the younger man's stubbornness. "You're the one who told me that he's already done it," he said softly. "How can I be wrong about something that you've already seen happen?"

"It hasn't happened yet," Naruto pointed out. "And I won't let it this time."

"But it might happen and then what will you do?"

Naruto was quiet for a long time and then he whispered. "I'll do what I have to. I won't let Orochimaru have him."

"Do you really think you can go through with that?"

"If he betrays us… I guess we'll find out."

Jiraiya digested Naruto's answer and then scratched the back of his head. "Wow, your response fills me with so much confidence. I guess there's nothing for me to worry about after all!"

Naruto glanced up at the tall ninja and scowled playfully. "You're an irritating old man."

Jiraiya grinned. "You're a bratty upstart who thinks he's responsible for the actions of every person he knows."

"Maybe," Naruto conceded, "but you like me."

"I don't even know you," Jiraiya shot back.

"Get Tsunade-baachan back here before the Chuunin Exam finals and help me take out Orochimaru if he shows up and we'll have at least two years to get to know each other before the next big threat comes along."

"Strangely, I'm actually looking forward to it."

Naruto's lips parted in a large smile. "Me too."

"You're sure you don't want to wait until after the Exam to go find her or at least come with me?"

Naruto shook his head. "It should be okay, I think. I'm here and a lot stronger than I was. Sarutobi knows Orochimaru might try something so security will be tighter and on higher alert. And I doubt the bastard would try anything during the down time, he's too full of himself to try for anything less than a big production when he makes his move. It'll be during the Exam, or not at all."

"Alright, fine, but in the mean time, what are we going to do about _him_?"

Naruto's face was the picture of innocence? "Who?"

Jiraiya tilted his head towards a tree a short distance away. Then his hand slipped into his vest and came out with a shuriken, which he threw with perfect accuracy towards the spot where the person who had been following them since they met that morning was hiding.

Naruto was just as fast, his own hand dipping into his weapon pouch and coming away with a kunai which he sent after Jiraiya's shuriken, knocking it off course before it got close enough to even trigger Gaara's defenses. "I can handle him."

Jiraiya shook his head. "You're going to get yourself killed acting like this."

"You trained me, blame yourself."

"If I trained you, I wouldn't have taught you to be _this_ stupid."

"Maybe, but you didn't train it out of me either."

"Touché."

The two smiled at each other and then Naruto said, "Before you go, do you want to help introduce me to Gamabunta?"

Jiraiya's smile became almost feral. "I don't think I'd miss _that_ conversation for anything in the world."

Naruto let his eyes drift over to the spot were Gaara was hiding. "Meet me outside the walls in about an hour; I don't think this will take much longer than that." He thought for a second and then added, "Bring some sake with you."

"Are you sure a young'un like you can handle that?"

The blond chuckled and said, "I'm still a few years off from drinking you under the table, I'm sure, but I can handle myself. Besides, technically I'm about twenty years older than I look. Even if you just give me the average of my physical age and my mental age, I'd still be legal."

"Well, this ought to be entertaining if nothing else. See you in an hour." Jiraiya turned to go, but stopped and glanced towards Gaara's hiding spot. "Try to stay alive until then."

Naruto smiled at him. "That's my line."

ooo

They'd always watched out for her, covered for her, helped her. As far as she knew, there'd never been any sort of spoken agreement between the two of them about it, but they both definitely seemed to treat her like someone to be protected.

And now, to protect and help her, they were trying to beat her into the ground.

One from the front, the other from the side, and a third from behind, they were moving in near perfect unison as they came at her. She'd learned that there would be no mercy, no pulled punches, no holding back, just as there would be no holding back when she faced her opponent in the second round of the Chuunin Exam Finals.

Hinata turned her forward foot in and then pivoted on that heel as she spun away from the attacks coming from the front and behind. Kiba and Shino passed her by on either side, both probably a little surprised at her tactic, though only Kiba showed it. The transformed Akamaru was now in front of her, his fist raised to attack. Hinata's right hand darted forward, catching the Kiba-look-alike in the chest as his right eye opened wider in surprise. Her left leg shot out and kicked the transformed puppy's legs out from under him, dropping him into the dirt.

One most strike would have taken him out of the match all together, but before she could make it, she was forced to twist to the side as the real Kiba's fist passed through the spot where her back had been only a second before.

Hinata's right hand rose up to inflict what she hoped would be a debilitating blow to his elbow, but he was too quick as he took another step forward and pivoted to swing his leg up at her. Hinata was caught off guard and the kick caught her in the back of the head. Stars exploded in front of her eyes as she stumbled to the side and tried to bring her arms up to block any attacks that might come at her.

The combination of dazed vision and the panoramic view of her Byakugan was a confusing one, so she wasn't totally sure which direction Shino ended up hitting her from, but it didn't really matter. She went down hard and was unable to rise. She'd lost…

…again.

"Your speed has improved," Shino remarked as he kneeled next to her, "but it is still insufficient to keep pace with Rock Lee."

"And you're not nearly mean enough to deal with that asshole cousin of yours," Kiba added. "Instead of just going after my arm, you should have been looking to take me out completely. That bastard won't give you many chances."

Hinata was still too dazed to chide Kiba for his choice of descriptions for Neji, but his point was well taken. She was definitely still too slow to fight Lee, even before he removed the weights as he had against Shino, and there was no chance that she'd be able to stand against her cousin. Even though it was only the first real day of training, she already felt a sense of doom. She was just going to humiliate herself in front of all those people when she fought against whoever won the first match.

What would her father say?

"Okay, Hinata, time to get up," Kurenai's kind voice interrupted her dark thoughts. "If speed is what you need, then let's start working on it. Ten laps around the village, you have one hour."

Hinata's eyes widened. Ten laps in an hour? Who could do such a thing?

"You're down to fifty-nine minutes, forty-seven seconds, Hinata," Kurenai said with a frightening smile. "I'd get a move on if I was you, the consequences of taking too long might not be fun."

Hinata didn't hesitate. She hadn't seen that look in Kurenai's eyes often, but she knew that her sensei was not joking. She took off running as fast as she could while Kiba, Shino, and Akamaru easily kept pace beside her. She was the slowest on the team, of course, and perhaps even the slowest genin in the finals, but she would do her best to improve.

That was all she'd ever wanted anyway.

ooo

Gaara glanced around the tree he was standing behind, trying to catch a glimpse of his prey. What he found was Uzumaki Naruto standing right on the other side of the tree, smiling stupidly at him.

"You know," the blond said, "it's not very nice to follow people around. I might get the wrong idea and think that you were looking to ambush me or something."

Gaara didn't reply.

The blond's grin grew larger. "You weren't looking for trouble, were you?" he asked.

Gaara could feel the urge to kill rising within his chest. It was a rush that couldn't be explained to one who hadn't experienced it first hand. In mere seconds, he was going to get to watch that smile vanish from Uzumaki Naruto's face. He was going to see the cold terror sweep over the boy and then he was going to snuff out his existence. Everything Naruto was, everything he had been, everything he might have been, Gaara's sand was going to devour them all and add their power to his own. If one looked far enough down the line, it could even be argued that Gaara was going to destroy thousands of lives with this one kill because Uzumaki Naruto would have no descendants. They too would be devoured by the hungry sands.

Naruto's smile didn't fade, however, nor did the fear that Gaara relished appear on his face. Instead, he shook his head and clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "You really are one crazy bastard, did you know that?" he asked as the sands rushed around him and crushed him.

"I mean seriously, have you not been paying attention to practically every meeting we've had so far?" Naruto asked from behind Gaara.

"It's like you're a retarded dog that just doesn't learn no matter how many times you run into a glass wall," a third Naruto called out from the tree above.

Gaara glared at these two new comers as smoke drifted out of the sand that should have crushed Naruto. "You're very annoying," he told them.

"And you're not as good as you think you are… yet," another Naruto retorted as he stepped out from behind one of the trees, his hands stuffed casually in his pockets. "You really must think I'm an idiot. I've had shadow clones following you from the second you woke up this morning. I kind of figured we'd be running into each other sooner or later."

Gaara's jaw tightened. So that explained it. That was why Naruto had been so calm and careless while walking through the village with the older man. It wasn't that he was oblivious to the danger he was in, he'd simply taken measures to protect himself against it.

Gaara hadn't even sensed the clones following him, hadn't even seen them. Such skill was well above the genin level. "Who are you?" he asked.

The closest Naruto smiled and brought his fingers together, vanishing in a cloud of smoke as the little boy chasing the ball appeared. "I'm just a kid," he said in a cheerful voice.

"And I'm the poor soul in charge of keeping little whippersnappers like him from getting killed by irritated jinchuriki," the Naruto in the tree – who was now the old man who had yelled at the boy – called out.

"I can be anywhere and anyone," the final Naruto said with a grin. "You won't make a single move that I won't be watching."

Gaara's lip turned up in small smirk. "Then you'll get to watch me kill you."

"Oh, don't say that. If you try to kill me, it's going to make it really hard for us to keep up this close friendship."

Gaara lifted his hand, pointed it at the boy, and then closed his fist as sand surrounded and crushed the image of the child. "I'm here to kill you."

Naruto wasn't smiling any more. "Are you sure you want to do this now?" he asked. "If you really feel ready then let's do it, but won't it mess up your friends' plans?"

"I've already told you, I don't have any friends."

Naruto's knuckles popped as his hand closed into a tight fist. "I'm not sure how I'm going to do it, but I'll have you singing a different tune by the time we're done." He shifted his feet apart let out a slow breath. "Whenever you're…" Suddenly his eyes glazed over and then he blinked and relaxed. "I guess it wasn't meant to be," he said with a shrug.

Gaara's brow furrowed, not sure what Naruto was talking about, but two seconds later a tall, powerfully built man with two red marks on his right cheek that looked a little like claws and the left half of his face covered by a flap of cloth that was wrapped around the rest of his head dropped to the ground between the two of them. Another second later he was joined by Temari and Kankuro.

"Gaara," the larger man, Baki, hissed, "what are you doing?!"

"You're in my way," Gaara informed him calmly.

"We were just talking, Baki-san," Naruto informed the Suna jounin.

The large man rounded on Naruto and fixed the blond with a firm glare that hid his confusion. "Do I know you?"

"Not yet, but I'm sure we'll run into each other again if things go according to _plan_," Naruto replied with a knowing wink.

Baki arched his one visible brow at the strange remark and then turned back to Gaara. "Your father would not approve of this sort of behavior."

"If you don't want to die, I suggest you move," Gaara told him.

"If _you_ don't want to die," Baki replied just as threateningly, "I suggest you return to your quarters. If you think you can kill me, you're welcome to try, but regardless of the outcome, your father will deal with you personally when he arrives."

Gaara continued to stare coldly at Baki for a moment longer and then he shrugged and turned to leave. "Uzumaki Naruto," he called out over his shoulder, "we'll meet in the Exam and I will kill you then."

"Looking forward to it," Naruto said with a wave as he leapt into the trees and vanished.

ooo

She told herself it was a crazy idea, but her feet kept moving. She argued that it was beyond stupid and pretty much pointless. He wouldn't want to help her, she knew. He had other, more important things to worry about than taking care of some little girl. Just because he was kind didn't mean that he was the sort of person who would drop everything to help someone for no particular reason.

Yamanaka Ino sighed and brushed a stray strand of blond hair out of her eyes. "This is so stupid," she grumbled to herself.

And yet, she still continued walking forward. For whatever reason, her body didn't seem to care about her objections and so on she went. Maybe it was because Asuma was busy with Chouji and Shikamaru (when the later could be found and convinced to actually train). Or maybe it was because Sakura had managed to advance and already seemed light years ahead of where she'd been when they graduated. Or maybe it was because the one she sought knew at least a fair amount of medical jutsu – if his actions during his match was anything to go on. Whatever the reason, she really wanted to find Yakushi Kabuto and see if he would be willing to help her get strong or at least give her some advice on how to go about doing so.

It had taken a bit of asking around to figure out which training areas he frequented, and even then she had a lot of ground to cover. Kabuto didn't seemed to prefer any one area over another and almost appeared to be making sure that he didn't let himself fall into any sort of predictable pattern. She did, however, find out who his father was and where his family house was located. It was a safe bet that, given his lack of a favorite, he would probably pick one that was closer to his house as opposed to anything too far away.

As luck would have it, there were only three within easy walking distance of the Yakushi family house and Ino found Kabuto carefully striking a wooden post at the second one she searched.

He must have seen her coming, because by the time she reached him he'd stopped what he was doing and was leaning against the post.

"Ino-chan, how nice to see you," he said with a smile and a small bow. Ino bit her tongue, trying to figure out what to say while Kabuto wiped sweat from his brow and then asked. "Is our meeting a coincidence, or can I help you with something?"

"N-no, Kabuto-san," she replied lamely, wishing that she could remember one of the relaxed, confident lines she'd thought up while searching for him and trying to talk herself out of it, "I was wondering…" she paused, closed her eyes, and took the plunge, "I was wondering if you could help me get stronger."

Kabuto frowned at her. "Isn't that your jounin's job?" he asked. "Or even your father's. He's quite well known, certainly he could help you."

Ino nodded slowly. She'd figured he would say no. "Yeah, you're right…"

"Of course," Kabuto said offhandedly, glancing to the side so that their eyes wouldn't meet, "if they're busy… I could use a sparring partner. My friends are all injured, at the moment and my jounin was called away on some sort of business."

Ino brightened instantly, but caught herself before she said anything too eager. "I'd be happy to help you, Kabuto-san," she replied calmly.

"Just 'Kabuto' is fine," he told her, as he pushed his glasses farther up on his nose. "My father likes to keep using suffixes, but I prefer it when my friends aren't so formal."

"Then you can just call me 'Ino,'" the blond replied with a shy smile.

Alright, Ino, would you like to learn a medical jutsu?"

"But, how does that help you?"

"It doesn't, really, but going over it with you will help me make sure I have it just right," he replied. "Besides, if I teach you how to heal yourself a bit, you'll be able to spar with me longer."

Ino smirked. "Who says _I'm_ going to be the one who needs healing?"

Kabuto looked at her for a moment and then said, "Well, if you get this jutsu just right, after you beat me up, you can heal me so I'll be able to spar with you a little longer."

He sat down on the grass and motioned for her to join him as he began explaining the jutsu and showing her the seals. After she'd run through them a few times and felt confident that she could get them right when attempting the jutsu, Kabuto pulled a kunai from his holster and pricked his thumb.

As she prepared to start the jutsu, Ino paused and said, "Thank you. I know you could be getting more done if you trained on your own."

Kabuto smiled. "Probably less than you'd think," he told her, "and I prefer having a training partner anyway… but if you don't heal my thumb, I might bleed out and then where will we be?"

Ino laughed and preformed the jutsu – perfectly, of course. It was nice to have a friend who wasn't a lazy ass or a fat ass or who you always felt you needed to stay ahead of.

ooo

"Not dead yet, huh?" Jiraiya said as Naruto appeared next to him just outside the village gates.

Naruto shrugged. "Not for lack of trying."

"Well, if you're thinking about going through with the sakazuki-goto with Gamabunta, you might not have to worry about trying much longer. You ever do this before?"

"Nah, I was too young when I started summoning him and by the time I was old enough, I'd been summoning toads for so long it wasn't really an issue."

"Then why worry about it this time?"

Naruto smiled. "Gamabunta gave me crap about it for years; I'd rather not have to listen to it again. Besides, it'll be fun."

Jiraiya threw back his head and let out a long, barking laugh. "Fun?! You have no idea what you're getting yourself into, do you?"

Naruto felt his good cheer starting to fall and wondered if his face was going pale as a sense of dread began to creep up on him. "Is it that bad?"

In answer, Jiraiya pulled a scroll from his pocket and unrolled it for Naruto to see. The blond's eyes widened at the sight.

"You're messing with me, aren't you?" he asked in an almost pleading voice.

"This was your idea," Jiraiya reminded him as they began walking towards an open area where Naruto could summon the enormous toad.

"Ugh," Naruto groaned, "I'm going to be hung over for a decade, aren't I?"

"If you're lucky."

They walked a short ways farther and then Jiraiya stopped and looked around. "This ought to be far enough. You ready?"

Naruto was suddenly feeling anything _but_ ready, but he nodded anyway. "It'll just take me a second. I need some of Kyuubi's chakra to summon someone this big." He closed his eyes and began to draw on the power sealed within himself. As the chakra surged through his veins, he brought his thumb up to his mouth and bit down on it. Then he opened one eye and whispered, "Should I summon him right under me so I'm standing on his head?"

Jiraiya took several steps back. "You really _are_ trying to get yourself killed, aren't you?"

Naruto grinned, his fingers flashing through the seals, and then slammed his hand onto the ground. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" Dark seals spread out across the grass where his palm was touching and then exploded into a large cloud of smoke as Naruto was suddenly about a hundred meters off the ground.

If you removed the size, grayish-blue short kimono, katana, and pipe, Gamabunta really looked like any other red colored toad… but those were four _big_ things you had to overlook to see him as such. At the moment, aside from the mountains on the other side of Konohagakure, he was easily the single largest object that could be seen.

Gamabunta pushed off his front feet and shifted to more of a squatting position as he eased the huge kiseru out of his mouth and blew out a large cloud of smoke that smelled a little like burning oak or mahogany or some other nice smelling wood. Naruto had always enjoyed the smell of the smoke, just not the _quantity_ that there was to smell. Gamabunta looked to one side and then to the other and then finally down at the Toad Sennin at his feet. "Hey Jiraiya! What'cha call me out here for?"

Jiraiya crossed his arms and shook his head. "I didn't call you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Naruto tapped his foot to alert the toad to his presence and then leaped from his perch between Gamabunta's eyes and landed on his snout so that they could properly see each other. "I summoned you. The name's Uzumaki Naruto," the blond said.

Gamabunta's scarred left brow – a gift from Orochimaru's great snake, Manda – rose slightly at this declaration and then his belly shook with laughter. "Who is this punk?! You expect me to believe that a little shit like you called me out? You're probably about ten years away from having the chakra to even _think_ about summoning me."

Naruto grinned and lifted his shirt so that his belly was exposed. Then he channeled enough chakra to cause the Kyuubi's seal to become visible. "Chakra has never been a problem for me."

The laughter stopped and the eyebrow returned to its rightful position. The skin under Naruto's feet rippled as the great toad shifted his kiseru to the other side of his mouth. After a moment of silence, Gamabunta said, "You're Minato's kid."

Naruto nodded.

Gamabunta looked down at Jiraiay and asked, "You let him sign the contract?"

Jiraiya nodded.

Gamabunta sighed thoughtfully and his eyes shifted away from the two humans. "Just because you're the Fourth's son, doesn't mean you're part of the family. So don't think any favors I owe your dad are going to just translate to you."

"I don't want you to owe me anything," Naruto told him. "I just want to join the family."

"You want to go through Sakazuki-goto?"

Naruto scratched the back of his head and chuckled nervously. "Well, I did until Jiraiya showed me how much sake he was bringing…"

Gamabunta laughed heartily and lowered his head so that Naruto could easily hop to the ground. "I like this kid," he told Jiraiya, "he honest. Get out the sake and the sakazuki, let's make him a member."

Jiraiya pulled out the scroll that he'd showed Naruto earlier and unsealed its contents: Ten large jugs of sake and a sakazuki that could have been used by several children as a swimming pool. Naruto had no idea where Jiraiya had found such a dish; certainly it wasn't the sort of thing that any old merchant would carry around.

After several minutes of pouring the alcohol, the enormous sakazuki was full enough to begin.

Gamabunta lifted the saucer and held it up as if making a toast. "Uzumaki Naruto, by partaking in this ceremony you are going to be a member of the family. I'll protect you like a son, the others will treat you like their brother, and you will return the honor should we need you." He brought it to his lips and tipped it back, downing several gallons of sake in a single sip. Then he set it on the ground in front of Naruto.

As the blond stepped forward to drink, Jiraiya whispered, "Drink long and hard, he'll respect you more if you do."

Naruto nodded and then proceeded to practically dunk his head in the alcohol. By the time he came up, his eyes were stinging from being submerged in the sake for so long and his head was spinning.

Gamabunta smiled. "Welcome to the family, kid."

"Thansh," Naruto replied and then sat down quickly before his legs gave out. The sake was strong, his little body wasn't used to it, and he was already starting to pay the price. "Ugh," he groaned, "sake tashts way 'orse than it ust to…"

Gamabunta chuckled. "Are you going to do that with everyone you let sign the contract?" he asked Jiraiya.

"I don't know what you're talking about," the Toad Sennin replied innocently. "Anyway, I think I like him better this way. He's kind of obnoxious most of the time." He looked down at Naruto who was swaying unsteadily even from his seated position. "This is the quietest he's been since I met him."

"Don't you humans have some sort of rule against drinking this young?"

Jiraiya nodded. "There are some extenuating circumstances here."

"Oh?"

"He's not as young as he looks," Jiraiya explained and then proceeded to tell as much of Naruto's story as he knew to the giant toad.

When he was done, Gamabunta blew out a deep smoky breath and said, "You should have told me this first. I don't make it a habit of initiating lunatics into the family, makes us look bad."

"I don't think he's a lunatic," Jiraiya retorted. Naruto hiccupped loudly, giggled a little, and then toppled over. "Well, not when he's sober, anyway."

Gamabunta was quiet for a moment and then said, "How sure are you about this?"

Jiraiya shrugged. "I'm sure enough to let him sign the contract and come out here with him while he did this."

After another brief silence, Gamabunta said, "Alright. I'll accept him… for now. If he does anything to cause trouble though, I'm holding you responsible." Without waiting for a reply he vanished in a cloud of smoke.

Jiraiya looked down at Naruto and watched as the blond fought a losing battle against unconsciousness as it tried to claim him. "I didn't think you'd take me so seriously," he admitted once Naruto's eyes finally closed. With a sigh he said, "Well, I guess this means I have to carry you home."

As he reached down to lift the boy onto his back a thought occurred to him. Glancing around to make sure that no one was watching, he pulled out a brush and some ink and began drawing rude messages and pictures on his young friend's face. When he was done, he stepped back and admired his handiwork.

A long curly mustache on his upper lip, a picture of a penis on either cheek pointing towards his mouth, a poorly drawn woman with enormous breasts leaning against one of the penises, and the phrases "I have a small dick" and "I'm gay" written across his forehead.

"Just like your dad," Jiraiya said with a smile as he lifted the boy onto his back and carried him back to the village.

Naruto was not, as he'd jokingly feared, hung over for a decade. He was, however, wishing for death when he woke up the following morning with one of the worst headaches he could remember having. A short while later, after bumping into Kiba, Shino, and Hinata on the way to Ichiraku for lunch and a warm cup of tea, he was wishing for _Jiraiya's_ death when his face art was pointed out to him. Kiba's loud, obnoxious laughter had rung in his ears the rest of the day as he sat in front of his sink and scrubbed at his face trying to remove the embarrassing pictures and words.

Fortunately for Jiraiya, by the time the marks all came off, he had already left on his journey to find Tsunade.

ooo

Sakura hated to admit it, but Anko knew her stuff. She was still weird and a bit scary and she kept making offhand derogatory comments about Sakura's abilities, appearance, and personal hygiene, but she was also a ruthless perfectionist who found every single flaw in Sakura's form and noticed anytime Sakura even thought about relaxing a little while training. Sakura would throw a punch and Anko would point out six different areas where her form was off. Sakura would try to correct those and Anko would still find _more_ mistakes. It was infuriating and – especially when coupled with Anko's snide remarks about how pathetic Sakura was – humiliating, but she learned faster than she ever had before.

Apparently Kakashi had known what he was doing when he got Anko to train her after all.

He'd obviously had a reason for bringing Yugao in as well. While Anko drilled things into Sakura's head and occasionally brought her close to tears, Yugao was there to soften the blow and add some encouragement. She never disagreed with Anko – because Anko was right in every criticism – but she was gentler in her correcting and willing to point out areas where Sakura was improving. Anko was the one who pushed her to be perfect, but it was Yugao who kept Sakura from growing too frustrated when she didn't get there instantly. Between the two of them, Sakura was harassed, goaded, and forced to get stronger or be beaten into the ground, but was also helped along the way with a kind word or a helpful suggestion that didn't include the words "idiot," "weakling," "pathetic," or "Princess."

Still, despite Yugao's kindness, Sakura's week was a hell she hoped she'd never have to live through again (in fact, she wasn't even sure that she _could_ live through it a second time). Anko never told her when they were meeting in the morning, she just broke into Sakura's room, started yelling and dragged the still half-asleep girl out of her bed and into the street… always being sure to smile and bow while politely informing Sakura's parents that she would return their daughter later that night and tell them she hoped they had a good day.

Strangely, Sakura's parents never complained about Anko's actions or the colorful language she used when referring to their only daughter as she pulled Sakura along through the dusty streets. Sometimes they even gave Anko some breakfast to take with her – none of which was ever shared with Sakura. Yugao usually met Sakura and Anko either out in the street or at the training grounds. If she happened to be in the street, she always hung back and chatted politely with Sakura's parents while Anko pushed Sakura towards the day's training area of choice.

By the end of the week, Sakura was so exhausted that she hardly noticed uncharacteristic firmness of her arms and legs, nor the way her body began to naturally adjust to Anko's movements when they sparred together. Reflexes that had not been there days before were now so ingrained into her tired body that they didn't even surprise her when she had the energy to try to pay attention to them. They were just there.

When she and Anko reached the training grounds on their final day together, Anko lifted the pink haired kunoichi off her feet and threw her several meters through the air. Sakura landed in a dirty, tired heap, covered head to toe in dust from the streets of Konoha, scrapes from the times she'd fallen on – or been dragged across – concrete sidewalks, and the wet grass that was now serving as her bed.

"Get up, Princess," Anko growled as she stood over Sakura, "the sun'll be up in an hour. It's time for us to spar."

"I'm tired," Sakura whispered weakly, her fingers digging into the dirt.

Anko put her hands on her hips and scowled. "What makes you think I give a shit? I'm supposed to make you a better ninja – even though that's practically impossible when I'm working with someone who has no talent, or desire, or brains, or anything else that's useful – and when you're a ninja, your enemy doesn't care if you're tired, or hurt, or just don't feel like fighting. You think this week has been bad? Little girl, you don't know what _bad_ is." She took a step forward and brought her leg back to deliver a kick to the prone girl. "Now _get_ up!"

Sakura flung the dirt in her hand up into Anko's face, catching the older kunoichi by surprise. In an instant she was on her feet, her fist swinging up at Anko's face as her hatred and frustration boiled over. Even half-blinded, Anko shifted her head to the side and dodged the punch. Sakura wasn't surprised and she didn't slow down. She dipped low and tried to sweep Anko's feet out from under her – Anko easily jumped over her leg – and then planted her hand into the ground and kicked up at her tormentor's face – Anko finished wiping the dirt from her eyes and pushed the kick away.

Her initial advantage obviously still hadn't been enough to make up the difference between their abilities, but Sakura didn't care about that. She was going to land a punch on Anko. Just once. She'd been ridiculed, beaten up, put down, embarrassed, and then beaten up some more by the sadistic jounin, and she wasn't going to let this whole week go by without at least getting to wipe that smirk off the older woman's face just once. She rolled to her feet and charged with near reckless abandon. Her punches were as perfect as she could make them, her kicks fast and right on target, and her speed was well beyond what she could have managed at the beginning of the week, but it still wasn't enough.

"You call that a punch?" Anko asked as she swatted one of Sakura's attempts away. "Have you been paying _any_ attention to what I've been telling you this week?" Sakura tried to kick her but Anko shifted her body just slightly and the kick sailed wide of its target. "I think your legs must be a little fat, Princess," she laughed, "it's slowing you down. Maybe I should call you Thunder Thighs instead of Princess."

Sakura growled and threw a quick series of four punches and then a kick aimed at Anko's chest. Everything was blocked or dodged with ease and Sakura could feel herself weakening and slowing down a little as her tired body's energy reserves began to run dry.

"This is just pathetic," Anko sighed. "You should just drop out of the Chuunin Exam… hell, I don't know if even going back to the Academy would be the right spot for you. All a princess like you is good for is making babies and serving as eye-candy to which ever guy gets drunk enough to throw you a bone."

Sakura sent a round house kick at Anko's face, but Anko easily dodged it, rolling her eyes at the futility of the younger kunoichi's attempts. In that brief instant, Sakura's body saw the opening. Faster than her brain could process, her weight shifted and she used the momentum of her kick to propel her around, bringing up her arm as she did so.

The back of her fist slammed into Anko's cheek with enough force to knock the older woman back a few steps.

Sakura's eyes opened wide as she looked at her hand in surprise.

Anko tongued the corner of her mouth, sampling the coppery-tasting blood that was running from her lip. "_Finally_," she chuckled as she stepped closer to Sakura. "I was beginning to think that you'd never notice all those openings I was giving you." She smiled and leaned down so that she was looking Sakura right in the eye. "I guess you have gotten a bit better this week, but in the future, keep something in mind…" her fist shot out and slammed into Sakura's head, sending the pink haired girl to the ground, "…don't let your guard down just because your enemy starts being nice to you."

Sakura lay still for a long time, panting and spitting out the blood that was pooling in her mouth. Anko's punch was the hardest she'd ever felt, far stronger than any of the other times she'd been punched during the week. Obviously, she really did have a long way to go before she'd be at that level, but the fact that Anko had felt okay with using that much strength meant that Sakura had advanced to the point where she could take it.

She pushed herself up onto her knees and then, with great effort, onto her feet. Not only could she take a punch like that, but she could get up after it. Her head was ringing and it was hard to think or see straight, but she was standing and that was what counted.

"You've really improved, Sakura-chan," Yugao said as she dropped from a nearby tree and landed next to the swaying girl. "I'm very proud of you."

Sakura smiled weakly and then returned most of her concentration to getting the world to stop spinning in front of her eyes.

"When you've recovered, I think we'll teach you a few ninjutsu that you might find useful," Yugao informed her. "Unfortunately, we probably won't be able to really practice them due to your fatigue, because they are quite chakra intensive. Once you've rested, however, I think your chakra reserves will have increased to the point where you can use them without too much trouble." She smiled and leaned down a little closer to Sakura, "I'm afraid you may actually have to thank Anko for that. Her training might not have been fun for you, but you'll soon realize that it has helped you more than you know."

Sakura tried to nod to show that she understood that she had actually benefited from Anko's torture, but her body didn't seem to like that movement, so her whole body swayed forward and then backward instead.

Yugao smiled at this and then helped the younger kunoichi to sit down and offered her some breakfast. After one of the most strenuous weeks of her entire life, Sakura seemed to be famished at all times. No sooner was the food set in front of her than it was gone as she hurriedly shoveled it into her mouth, desperate for the energy it could provide her.

When they were done eating and Sakura had had a chance to take a short walk to keep her muscles loose while she rested and regained her equilibrium, the three ninja sat on the grass and discussed the ninjutsu they were planning on teaching Sakura. Just as Yugao had said, most would be too much for Sakura in her tired state, but after a couple of days of resting, she would be able to practice them on her own.

Since she couldn't perform them as part of her practice, she instead was simply shown the seals for them and made to form them until they were second nature. Anko, of course, found Sakura's seal forming to be slow and sloppy and made her work on speeding it up while keeping each crisp and clean. Sakura complained that none of her teachers had ever said she needed to work on such a thing – they'd said quite the opposite, in fact – but Yugao had agreed with Anko and gave her a few tips to help her be quicker.

It was mid afternoon when Yugao finally called a halt to the training. Sakura could now form all of the seals for the different jutsu she'd been shown with relative ease and was forming the seals a little quicker and cleaner – Anko said the improvements were minimal, at best. Each of the jutsu had been demonstrated for her and their chakra requirements had been explained as much as possible. One never really knew how much chakra was needed until they'd actually preformed the jutsu a few times to see how it felt to get it right because explaining chakra requirements was a little like explaining strength. What was heavy to one person might be relatively light to someone else.

"Kakashi-sempai wanted me to tell you that he was going to have your team meet for dinner at the sushi bar on the east side of the Hokage Tower courtyard," Yugao informed Sakura when they were done. "He didn't say it, but I think the person who he's lined up to help train you for the rest of the month will be meeting you there." She paused and then, with a wink and an affectionate smile, added, "You'll probably want to clean yourself up a little before then."

Sakura rose, bowed deeply and thanked them for their help, and then hurried home to get cleaned up so that she could meet her teammates, whom she had missed very much during the past week.

As she and Yugao watched Sakura leave, Anko spit and then said, "Well, that chore is finally over with."

Yugao smiled. "You liked her."

"She was a bratty little princess who is _barely_ worth calling a ninja."

"How many people have you ever trained that have landed a punch, even when you're holding back?"

Anko scowled. "It was a lucky shot."

"You'll miss her tomorrow."

"Maybe I'll go drag her through the streets, for old time's sake."

"Be careful," the purple haired ANBU member warned, "someday she's going to be in her prime and you're going to be losing a step… paybacks can be a bitch."

"Like she'll live that long."

"You never know," Yugao replied with a shrug and then, with a small wave goodbye, started walking towards Hayate's house to meet him for dinner.

Anko watched her go for a moment, frowning thoughtfully, and called out, "I won't miss her!"

Yugao back turned and smiled sweetly. "Go work on your taxes, Anko," she said, "I'm sure you'll run into Sakura-chan again someday."

ooo

Naruto decided to stop by Sakura's house before heading over to the spot where he was supposed to meet Sasuke and Kakashi. Knowing Kakashi, they were going to be waiting for a while anyway and Sakura's house was on the way for him. From what he remembered, her parents weren't exactly fond of him, so he didn't bother knocking on the door; he just leaned against the wall on the other side of the street and waited.

After only a few minutes of waiting, she came out and started heading towards the meeting spot.

"Sakura-chan," he called out.

She stopped and stared at him in surprise for a second as he walked over to her and then she smiled and hugged him. "It feels like forever since I saw you," she informed him when she noticed his confused look at the unexpected display of friendliness.

Naruto wasn't about to complain about such things, so he smiled and nodded and told her that he'd missed her during the past week. As the two of them walked towards the Tower, they chatted quietly about their training so far. Naruto knew that it would be stupid to claim to be training under Iruka since his lie could easily be uncovered if they happened to run into their old sensei, so he confessed that he'd met a 'strange old man' named Jiraiya who was training him.

Sakura, of course, knew the names of the Sannin, but Jiraiya wasn't so uncommon a name that she immediately associated the Jiraiya Naruto had met with the one from the books about the last Great War. Naruto didn't bother enlightening her, and was more interested in hearing how her training was going anyway. She was just starting to tell him about the different jutsu that Yugao and Anko had taught her when they reached the meeting spot and strangely found Sasuke and Kakashi waiting for them.

Naruto's eyes narrowed. "You're early, Kakashi-sensei," he pointed out.

Kakashi looked up from his book and raised an eyebrow at Naruto. "And you're late."

Naruto felt his muscles tense briefly and said, "You're never early."

Kakashi no doubt saw the tension in his student's face and his mask shifted in the way they all associated with him smiling. "There's something… _important_… that's happening tonight. Don't worry, it won't happen again." He centered his one eye on Naruto and added, "Unless you can think of some _future_ event that I should plan on being early to."

Naruto relaxed and a smile appeared on his face. "Just my coronation as Hokage… and Sakura-chan's wedding, unless you want to suffer her wrath."

Sakura gave Naruto a funny look and then rolled her eyes and shook her head at his antics, before looking over at Sasuke. The Uchiha was almost smiling at Naruto and Kakashi. A second later, his eyes shifted to her and his lips got a little closer to forming a smile.

"How has your week been?" he asked as they started walking towards the sushi bar.

"Hard," she admitted.

"Sakura-chan's going to kick your ass," Naruto added, stepping between the two of them and throwing his arms over their shoulders.

"Naruto!" Sakura hissed.

"I expect her to try," Sasuke replied, ignoring her, "but I won't hold back against her either."

Naruto chuckled and then, much to Sakura's relief, changed the subject to Sasuke's training and how it was going. The three genin enjoyed their walk and talked and laughed – well, Sakura and Naruto laughed anyway – most of the way to the eatery.

"Kakashi?" a voice called out from the crowd just as they reached the sushi bar. The three genin turned with their sensei as a young woman stepped forward. She stared at Kakashi for a moment and then smiled as she self-consciously tucked a long strand of light brown hair behind her left ear. Her brown eyes seemed to sparkle as she took another step towards them. "I was worried I'd miss you in the crowd," she said softly and then added with a little chuckle, "but I guess you've always been pretty hard to overlook, huh?"

Naruto stared at her, tuning out whatever Kakashi said back and any other conversation going on around him. This woman who was so easily commanding Kakashi's attention was familiar, very familiar.

And her presence made him feel uneasy.

At the same time, he couldn't quite remember who she was. Her face seemed younger than his brain thought it should be, which was understandable if he hadn't met her until some future date the first time around, and her hair was longer and kind of the wrong color. She had a small red stripe on either cheek that looked similar to the fang markings that the Inuzuka clan sported, and Naruto was certain that these marks were the things most catching his memory. The woman wasn't wearing a hitai-ate, but there was something in the way that she carried herself – and something in the back of his mind that he couldn't seem to pull forth – that told him she was a ninja or at least had some ninja training.

Though she was by no means the most beautiful woman Naruto had ever seen (she wasn't ugly, just not remarkably attractive), she held Kakashi's full attention in a previously unheard of way. _Icha Icha Paradise_ had never held the enigmatic jounin's eye like this young woman was.

"So, this is your team," she said, turning to look at the three genin next to Kakashi. "It took you a while to find one."

"I suppose I was just waiting for the right one to come along," Kakashi replied with a strange sounding chuckle.

"Well, it looks like…" she did a double take when she looked at Sasuke "…an Uchiha?"

Kakashi grinned under his mask and nodded. "That's Uchiha Sasuke, next to him is Uzumaki Naruto, and this is Haruno Sakura." He turned to his team and said, "This is… an old friend, Shin Rin."

Her eyes passed slowly from Sasuke, hesitated for a moment on Naruto and then finally settled on Sakura as she bowed politely. "Nice to meet you all."

Sakura bowed just as politely wanting to make a good first impression, Sasuke dipped his head about as politely as he ever got, and Naruto just went pale.

Rin. Shin Rin. Kakashi's old teammate. In the future her hair was shorter and had gray streaks in it, but now that the name had been said, he knew exactly who she was.

She was the one thought by most to be responsible for Kakashi's death. In Naruto's mind, there was no question that she _was_ the one to blame for Kakashi's death.

o

o

A/N: To be clear, I am in no way condoning underage drinking. The fact that a citizen of the USA can go off and fight in a war, but can't buy alcohol makes perfect sense to me… well, maybe not, but at the same time, given the number of idiots I've seen drink themselves into a stupor, perhaps it's not the worst law out there. Personally, I don't even really like alcohol all that much (though there are a few drinks that I enjoy every once in a while), so I don't see why everyone thinks getting drunk is such a cool thing anyway. Okay, I'll come down off my little soapbox now…

Alright, let's see how we did:

Plenty of Jiraiya… check.

Lots of Naruto… check.

A bit of Gaara… check.

Giant Toad… check.

Some Anko… check.

Twist at the end… check.

Small cliffhanger… check.

No weird potential couplings… er, moving on…

Yup, this is pretty much the perfect chapter. I expect no complaints whatsoever and lots of praise for my awesomeness at writing such an awesome chapter that was full of… er… awesomeness! No, no, just a joke. Seriously though, I hope that you all enjoyed the chapter after the long wait. I enjoyed my little break from the story and am feeling much more energized. I didn't even realize how run down I was getting until I started writing this and realized how much more fun it was all of a sudden.

So, what do you think? A little twist there at the end, eh? I've gone a couple of chapters without cracking a hundred reviews, so perhaps this little turn about will get me there again. I've seen Rin show up in a couple of time travel fics (being the only member of the Fourth's Team, besides Kakashi, whose death hasn't been confirmed), but never as a potential villain. Next chapter will get more into exactly what Naruto means about Rin being responsible for Kakashi's death and I think by the end of that one we'll be getting ready for the finals in the Chuunin Exam… Hopefully…

Anyway, please review and let me know what you think and feel free to point out any mistakes or errors that you feel like alerting me to. I read over the chapter a couple of times, but that definitely doesn't mean that I caught everything. See you next week.

_Shin _Rin – Rin's last name is a little bit of a joke on my part… not a _funny _joke, mind you, but I thought it was clever and I needed to give Rin a last name. You see, 'shinrin' means 'forest' which, according to narutopedia, is one possible meaning behind Rin's name. Also, 'shin' can mean 'truthfulness' – a bit ironic considering what Naruto thinks she was responsible for in his original timeline. So with the last name of Shin, for truthfulness, her full name actually means 'forest'… alright, I already told you it wasn't a funny joke!

_Sakazuki and Sakazuki-goto__ – A sakazuki is a small flat saucer/cup that one drinks sake from. Sakazuki-goto is a custom of sharing sake from a sakazuki as part of a celebration or ceremony. Usually this is done during weddings, but the yakuza also use it as a sort of symbol of alliance or friendship. In chapter 134, when Naruto summons Gamabunta to fight the transformed Gaara, Gamabunta initially refuses to help because he and Naruto have not gone through with this ceremony (Naruto points out that he's not old enough to drink yet anyway). I doubt it will be something that is shown in the series, but I thought it would be interesting to have Naruto go through with it this time around._

_Kuchiyose no Jutsu__ – Literally "Summoning Technique." I doubt this one needs much explanation._

Kiseru – A traditional Japanese pipe. This is the type of pipe that Gamabunta uses. The Kiseru has a smaller mouth and is much longer than the pipes we see – or _used_ to see to anyway – in the west.


	32. Chapter 31

Chapter 31

o

One of the first jutsu taught to Academy students was Henge no Jutsu. There were a number of reasons for this, of course, though mostly it was because it was a relatively easy jutsu to perform and required only minimal amounts of chakra. Simply channel enough chakra, form the proper seals, keep the image you wanted to appear as in your mind and 'poof,' instant success.

Or, as Naruto most often used it as a child… and occasionally as an adult: 'poof,' instant humor.

While the jutsu itself was relatively easy to perform, the theories behind it could be difficult to grasp. Just watching it being demonstrated, it was easy to get the false impression that the user had actually somehow changed their physical bodies and not simply wrapped themselves in an illusion. This impression was further enforced by the fact that the new body appeared to do things that a smaller one would be incapable of. Changing into someone taller meant that you had a longer reach and could grasp things farther away. So, when a child used Henge no Jutsu to become an adult and then reached over and picked up a cup that would have been out of reach for the shorter arms of the original body, it was easy to think that the child's arms had actually grown.

The Proportionality Effect, it was called… or something like that, Naruto could never remember all of the theories and effects and laws and whatever else. The jutsu worked, what difference did it make how it worked or why it worked?

For those who did care, however, one of the interesting things about Henge no Jutsu was that the physical body of the user did not grow. The cup that was out of reach before the jutsu was preformed was out of reach after the jutsu was preformed. The jutsu created the illusion of added height and mass and arm length, but not the real thing. It was, in a sense, a sort of ninjutsu-genjutsu hybrid. An observer might think that the child was actually reaching out and easily grabbing a cup that had once been out of reach, but in actuality, the child was leaning as far over as possible to reach it, possibly even taking a small step towards it – so long as that step didn't move them too far out of the illusion.

Naruto had never understood this concept while in the Academy. He wasn't even totally sure that he understood it by the time he found himself in charge of the whole village. He grasped that it was part of the reason why the illusion was so easily disrupted by the touch of an outside object, but it had always just seemed too bizarre and confusing to him. Of course, he'd never been one to really grasp the theories behind a jutsu, he just did them.

Jiraiya had once said that he thought Naruto learned jutsu so easily because he didn't bother wasting time trying to understand the ends and outs of them, only the hows; all his focus was on doing the jutsu, not on why it worked the way it did.

Perhaps that was why he never considered if some new twist on a jutsu would or wouldn't work, he just did it the way he thought it would work best for a given situation. In this case, he'd decided that as great as Henge no Jutsu was for spying on people while pretending to be someone else, it was difficult because you still had to look at them, potentially giving yourself away. To get around this little problem, he simply started using the jutsu in a slightly different way that would allow him to look where he needed to without _appearing_ to be looking that way at all.

He just put the jutsu on backwards.

Naruto glanced to the side, causing the illusion he was projecting to look in the opposite direction as he surveyed the bar. It was smoky, noisy, and smelled of cheap liquor. There were dozens of people standing about talking, laughing, drowning their frustrations in sake, or some combination thereof. It was probably the perfect place to have a clandestine meeting so long as you weren't the sort who called attention to yourself too much.

Rin sat at a table near the wall, her back protected and her eyes carefully watching the room as she sipped her drink. She could have been anyone, few looked her way and those who tried to talk with her were politely told that she wasn't interested in company.

Naruto was at the bar, the illusion of a slightly dumpy, balding man wrapped around him. He looked like a smalltime merchant, or maybe someone who just worked for a smalltime merchant, with his mostly clean, but very modest, shirt that did little to hide the pudgy belly that was technically hanging off Naruto's back. He was chatting happily with a plain looking, probably over-the-hill woman with a better than average rack. It might have been hard keeping up his side of the conversation with her had she not simply been a transformed clone.

His goal for the night was simple. He was going to see what Rin was up to, where she went, and who she talked to. And if he found any sort of evidence that proved she was what he thought she was, he was probably going to kill her.

There was a chance, of course, that she wouldn't meet up with anyone this first night… or that she'd already gotten all the instructions she needed before she arrived in Konoha… or that she wasn't even a bad person yet… or that this wasn't his timeline and she wasn't a bad person at all….

There was a lot he potentially didn't know, but he wouldn't take any chances, not with someone like her.

He never met Rin in the future, which was a pity because he'd really wanted to see how good of an impression of Ibiki he could have done with her sitting across from him. Probably he wouldn't have even bothered getting information out of her, hearing her beg for death the way Kakashi had would have been enough.

It had happened early on in the war, not long after Akatsuki was destroyed. Kakashi had gone to see her in some village where she was working as a doctor, treating patients too far removed from the larger cities to get the sort of treatment that could be found there. He'd said he just wanted to make sure that she was safe, something about owing it to a friend.

Naruto had whispered to Sakura that Kakashi just wanted to go "play doctor" with his old teammate. If memory served, Sakura had smacked him on the back of the head and told him not to be so childish.

When Kakashi came back, everything was normal. He said he had a good time seeing her and even looked a little embarrassed when Naruto asked _how much_ of her he'd seen… that night Naruto had to have dinner with Hinata rather than his usual meal with Sakura. Apparently he didn't understand anything about romance or women and was being a Neanderthal… or something. He remembered feeling a little bad about annoying Sakura, but even guiltier for being happy about her annoyance because Hinata was a much better cook.

Two days later, during a village council meeting, Kakashi had stood up, bowed politely to one of the councilmen and then plunged a kunai into the man's throat. Another council member was dead before Kakashi was knocked out of a window. Five random villagers were killed before Naruto had managed to catch up with him.

In the end, Kakashi had begged Naruto to kill him.

Another villager was dead before Naruto finally went through with it. He'd tried to simply stop his sensei. He'd tried to knock him unconscious so they could figure out what had been done to him. He hadn't been strong enough to do either without resorting to lethal force.

The last villager Kakashi killed was a six year old girl who was just in the wrong spot at the wrong time.

Naruto had later wondered if it wasn't better that Kakashi had died rather than having to live with having done such a thing… there were times were he wished he could have died at that time instead of having to go tell that little girl's parents what had happened.

An autopsy later revealed that something had been done to Kakashi's brain, something even Tsunade and Shizune had never seen before. He'd been programmed, like some sort of rigged up exploding tag. There might have been a fuse, there might have been a code word, no one knew… and that scared everyone.

And now, Rin was in Konoha. She'd been called by Kakashi to help train Sakura. He'd thought that her medical knowledge would be something Sakura would be interested in and her genjutsu abilities had been some of the best of her generation when she was still a ninja. He hadn't known that he was summoning a potential enemy into his home.

_'I liked it better when people used to clear things like this with me,'_ Naruto grumbled as he strained to hear what the latest semi-drunken patron was asking Rin before she smiled, shook her head, and essentially said "not interested."

The clone to his right giggled and Naruto braced himself for the wetness that the giggle told him was about to come. With the illusion cast backwards so he could watch Rin without looking like he was watching her, his mouth was in the wrong spot and his arms didn't reach back properly to grasp drinks that were actually behind him. This made it impossible to really drink anything or even appear to. Such sobriety would, of course, draw attention from anyone looking for something weird.

A bar patron who just sat at the bar, but didn't drink? It might invite questions or at least more scrutiny than he wanted.

He couldn't afford to have Rin realize that he was watching her. Whether she was good or bad at this point and in this timeline, she wouldn't appreciate it and she would be far more careful in the future, making his job of stopping her from doing anything that might hurt one of his friends even more difficult.

Plus, bar owners didn't look kindly on young ninja sneaking and getting drunk while hiding under an illusion. Kiba had nearly been kicked out of the Academy after getting caught once and he hadn't even gotten a chance to actually drink anything, how much worse would it be for the village pariah to be caught doing it?

To keep up the illusion of drinking, the clone was actually pretending to playfully feed him the drinks – always giggling right before it did it so he wouldn't be caught off guard. Not only did he get to look like he was drinking, but he also seemed to be so engrossed with his companion that no one bothered them about anything and he began to reek of alcohol… which would make it easier to pretend to be staggering home if he had to follow her later and might even help explain why he was heading towards the section of the village reserved for visitors. Naruto had gotten drunk enough to forget where he lived, it was a viable excuse.

As he did his best not to shiver while the sake slid down his back, he began to wish that he had just told Kakashi about Rin as soon as their dinner was over. The only problem with that was that he was worried about how much faith those that he'd revealed himself to had in him. So far he'd been wrong about Orochimaru showing up, he'd been wrong about Kabuto dropping out of the Exam, he might be wrong about Kabuto being bad altogether, and Baki hadn't even flinched at a thinly veiled reference to the possible Suna-Oto invasion plan so there was a possibility that he was wrong about that too… how many more times could he make a wrong prediction before they started wondering if he was lying?

Another giggle, another splash of annoying sake on his head.

Rin chose that moment to stand and begin making her way towards the door. Naruto gave her a fifteen second head start and then asked the clone if she'd like to go somewhere more private. She agreed and then guided him outside, being careful to keep him from bumping into anyone since he was forced to walk backwards to keep up the illusion.

Once they were outside, the clone led him to a nearby alleyway where Naruto changed the image so that it was on the "right" way while the clone transformed, leaped onto the roof of the closest building, and began following Rin from above with the three other clones that had been watching from outside the whole time. Naruto made a big production of staggering down the street while still keeping his target in sight.

Rin didn't walk fast or seem to be heading anywhere important. She took side streets, she walked by the hospital, she even took a trip past the Academy before finally heading towards the section of the village with the nice – but not too expensive – hotels.

Naruto didn't follow her to each of these spots; he let his clones handle most of the actual tailing. He just tried to keep himself in her general area so he could get there quickly if anything suspicious happened. He was, however, on the street with her when she began to get closer to her hotel.

It was at that point that her pace suddenly slowed – a bad sign if ever there was one. Naruto was no fool; he didn't change his own pace in the slightest. If he had to walk past her, that was fine. The quickest way to reveal yourself would be to show that you were actually trying to keep a specific distance behind someone.

Rin didn't let him get past her anyway.

"You can stop now," she said, a small smile evident on her face in the light from a nearby street lamp.

"I cansh shtop," Naruto slurred, slowing slightly and swaying unsteadily on his feet. "I gotta geh home…"

"Naruto-kun, I am neither stupid nor blind. Drop the act."

Naruto hissed a mental curse, but only let confusion show on his face. "Nar'to?" he asked, "I donwan any ramen, I jesh wanna geh home…"

Rin rolled her eyes and bent over to pick up a small stone off the ground near her feet. With expert aim, she bounced it off Naruto's head, dispelling the illusion.

Naruto didn't bother to keep his cursing mental this time. "What gave me away?"

Rin sighed, "Come on, I could see through a genin level henge in my sleep."

This wasn't true, or at least it wasn't the reason that she'd spotted him. "Really, what was it?"

She smiled and brushed a strand of hair that a faint breeze was playing with behind her ear. "The sake," she replied, "it was spilling on the floor. You were either pissing yourself or spilling your drink when your friend poured it into your mouth. Seemed kind of weird, then I noticed in the mirror behind the bar that your shirt wasn't getting wet. A brown shirt like that one should have gotten a dark brown stain when the sake spilled on it."

Naruto shook his head. It was a stupid mistake to make. He'd been spending too much time worrying about what Rin was planning and remembering what she'd done in the future. A mistake like that was inexcusable.

"Still," she said, glancing up at the moon, "I must admit to being a little impressed. You didn't look my way even once, yet you knew the second I left." She thought for a second and then gave him a critical look. "The back of your head is wet, not the front… you had your henge on backwards." She crossed her arms over her chest and nodded. "I take it back, I'm very impressed. I don't think I've ever even heard of anyone doing something like that."

"Yeah," Naruto replied with a grunt, "I'm amazing. It still doesn't explain how you knew it was me."

"Call it a lucky guess. Does Kakashi know you're frequenting bars and stalking women?"

She was lying about the lucky guess part, he was pretty certain of that, and it was tempting to lie back, but she would just bring it up with Kakashi later. There was a decent chance that she would see him before Naruto could find him and warn him about his lie. "No."

Rin frowned thoughtfully and cocked her head to the side. "So, why me?"

Naruto had known that there was a chance that he'd get caught. He'd thought it would be more difficult than this, but he'd planned for it all the same. If Rin did catch him, obviously she would know that something was up, but with a good enough excuse, she didn't have to know just what it was. Being overly protective of a friend and former crush was moderately reasonable, especially since he'd spent so long without any friends at all as a kid. Anyway, it was the best he'd been able to come up with during his brief planning of his mission.

"Sakura-chan's important to me," he answered in a cautious, slightly cold, voice. "Kakashi-sensei says you're okay, but he hasn't seen you in a while and who knows what sort of women he thinks are 'okay?' For all we know, you're the sort who goes out to bars, gets drunk, and ends up dancing naked on a table or going home with a dozen men…"

The kunoichi shook her head. "Has he been letting you read that foul book of his?"

"No."

"Good, because your mother would…" her voice trailed off and her eyes widened slightly as she realized what she'd said.

Naruto's eyes were plenty wide as well and the plan was suddenly hard to remember. "You knew my mother?" It was less a question and more a demand.

Rin winced and shook her head apologetically. "I… I'm sorry, Naruto-kun. I'd love to tell you, really I would, but we're not supposed to tell you about your parents until you're older."

Naruto was well aware of the rule. No one was supposed to tell him about his father – or, by extension, his mother – until he was at least twenty and deemed ready to handle such information. Tsunade had told him all about it when he was sixteen, shortly before they'd headed off to start dealing with the remaining members of Akatsuki. She hadn't wanted him to die without knowing. It had been something of a peace offering – though an unnecessary one – after their fallout over Jiraiya's death. He hadn't been mad at her anymore by that point, but his words had cut her deeply and she had never gotten completely over them.

"I know about the rule," he told Rin softly, only half-aware of the fact that his suspicions of her seemed to be slipping away. The part of his brain paying attention to such things pointed out that _this_ Rin hadn't done anything wrong… maybe. Probably it wouldn't have mattered even if she had already killed half the village. As much as he hated her, he'd never really gotten to hear much about his mother from anyone. He knew her name and where she was from, that was it. There had never been time for him to really look any deeper. If Rin knew something about her, Naruto wanted to know it. It wasn't like he could really start demanding to know if she was planning on killing Kakashi anytime soon anyway. "I know my dad was the Fourth Hokage. I even know my mother's name was Uzumaki Kushina… but that's about all I know."

Rin absorbed this information in silence for a moment and then sighed. "Does he listen to _any_ rules anymore?" She looked down at Naruto and said, "When did Kakashi tell you?"

"He didn't. Old man Hokage did."

"Ah, well, I guess he would know what he was doing." Rin was quiet for a moment and then she smiled and said, "Yes, I knew your mother. She and Minato-sensei were just 'friends' back when our team was formed... well, _one_ of them thought they were just friends anyway. My team got to watch your father fall in love with your mom." She leaned forward and winked at him as she conspiratorially whispered, "I even helped your dad see the light a little bit. You could say that you were a surprise that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for me."

Naruto sucked a slow breath in through his nose and then asked, "What was she…"

Before he could finish the question, he felt a presence behind him. Rin's eyes shifted past him as well. "Kakashi, we were just talking about you," she said with a soft giggle.

Kakashi glanced at Naruto for a second, his expression unreadable, and then said, "I need to speak with Naruto about his training." He watched the two of them for a second longer and then said, "It can wait, I'll meet him at his apartment when you two are done with… whatever you're doing."

Rin smiled sweetly. "Naruto-kun was just walking me home to make sure I got there safely. One never knows when a dozen men might jump out and force a beautiful woman such as myself to dance naked on a table, right Naruto-kun?"

Naruto did not smile at her joke. The presence of Kakashi was enough to shake away thoughts of his mother and bring him back to the reason he'd gone through all the trouble of following Rin in the first place. "I think you can make it the rest of the way home on your own," he said with a small bow. He waited until he felt Kakashi move away from them, and then he whispered, "If you do anything to hurt or mess with my friends, I'll kill you."

Rin's eyes widened slightly and a perplexed expression spread across her face. "You're becoming less cute all of a sudden, but I'll keep that in mind," she replied with a roll of her eyes. "Just so we're clear: I would never hurt Kakashi-kun, I… well, I _wouldn't_ hurt him. Ever. As for your teammates, I have nothing against any of them nor do I have any other reason to hurt them. They're on Kakashi's team, so as far as I'm concerned they're practically family. I'd protect them with my life."

Naruto nodded slowly, not quite believing her, but also seeing nothing but honesty in her face. She was either a good actress or wasn't actually an enemy… yet. Without another word, he turned and walked back towards Kakashi.

"If you want to know anything else about her, Kakashi-kun probably knows as much about her as I do," Rin said before he was out of earshot, "but if you want the juicy details about her and your dad getting together, you'll have to come see me. He didn't pay attention to important things like that back then… or now, for that matter."

She waited for Naruto to reply, but he wasn't sure what to say. He wasn't even sure what to think, for that matter. In all his years of dreaming of meeting up with Rin, he'd never thought it would go like this. She was some sort of nightmare that had plagued Konoha in general and him in particular for years, the sort of person whose name was used as a warning to young genin about foolishly fighting when they should be running. "Pick your fights carefully and retreat if you get in over your head. If you don't, you might turn into Rin's latest weapon," was one of the first things told to new genin. By the time they went out into the field, they were all well aware of that danger and what it could mean to the village if they were caught.

But now that he was here, standing across from her, she wasn't what he'd expected. She was either exceptionally kind, not to mention forgiving, or else wickedly devious…

"Sweat dreams, Naruto-kun," Rin said as she turned and headed towards her apartment. "My door is always open for the son of Minato-sensei and Kushina-san, if you ever want to talk about them or anything else."

When she was gone, Naruto walked slowly away. He could feel Kakashi just up ahead and could guess at least some of what they'd be talking about.

Not that long ago, he'd lamented the fact that even though he was getting a second chance at being young, things were still as complicated as when he was an adult, probably even more so. He hadn't known what complicated was back then. Now he found himself wishing that things were _only _that complicated. At least back then he was sure he knew who his enemies where.

As soon as he rounded the corner, Kakashi fell into step next to him. "What was that all about?"

Naruto's shoulders slumped slightly and he stared at the ground as he let out a slow breath and weighed his words carefully.

Kakashi waited for several seconds and then said, "Naruto, I know I said I don't want to know about my future, but, I have to ask. In the future, did I have some sort of debilitating brain injury?"

Naruto's head shot up so fast he nearly lost his balance and fell. "What?"

Kakashi shrugged. "I assume that something must have happened to me that you think I'm a big enough idiot not to notice your reaction to Rin when you met her and the fact that you apparently followed her to the bar in disguise… or is pouring alcohol on your head going to be a tradition in twenty years?"

Naruto chuckled. "No, it's not. The tradition in the future is to pour it down your throat as quickly as possible as soon as you had any time off. Helps you forget things for a while, you know?" Kakashi nodded, he knew. "And Rin, she's… she _might_ be bad."

"Tell me what happened."

"It's about how you died," Naruto warned him. Kakashi had specifically said that he didn't want to know about that, but he'd also said he wanted to know about any imminent dangers.

"I sort of figured. Tell me."

Naruto hesitated for a second, trying to think of the best way to put it. He was, after all, telling Kakashi that a childhood friend had maybe turned him into a bomb in the future, not the sort of subject to be broached lightly. "There was never any proof or anything," he said at last, "but right before I had to… before you died, you went and saw her. Then, when you came back you just… snapped."

"Snapped?"

"You killed a bunch of people. Two Council members – not that _that_ was a big loss – and some random people out on the streets… the last one was a little girl, she wasn't even old enough to start at the Academy yet."

Kakashi stopped walking and stared at Naruto, something unreadable in his eye.

Naruto lowered his head and stared at the ground. "I… I had no choice. I couldn't stop you without….

Finally Kakashi understood some of Naruto's reluctance to talk about it. "I see. You did the right thing, I'm sure in the future I understood."  
"It scared people," the blond whispered. "I mean, _really_ scared people. Shizune said something had been changed in your brain. Chemical-something or other messing with your neurological-what's it. I don't really remember the exact words, but someone messed with your head and turned you into a weapon. You weren't the last one, either. We… we had to start arresting people if they were the only survivor of an ambush or something. We couldn't tell who had actually escaped and who was let go." He paused and then added, "I think more than one person chose to end it if they were the last alive rather than coming back and dealing with all the suspicion."

"And you think Rin had something to do with this?"

"Yes…" Naruto replied, but then shook his head, "maybe… I don't know. We never found her. There was never any proof except for the timing, but…"

"But you were sure it was her."

"Yes. If I'd ever met her in the future, there wouldn't have been enough pieces left over for her family to bury."

Kakashi looked back in the direction they'd come and sighed. "Rin doesn't have any family. Her parents and brother died during the last Great War. I understand why you would suspect her, but I know Rin. She wouldn't do something like that, at least not yet. Maybe something could have changed her in the future, but right now she's totally loyal to Konoha."

"So was Orochimaru, once upon a time."

"Touché."

"Just… be careful around her, sensei. I might be wrong, it might have just been a coincidence, but I don't want to have to kill you a second time."

Even in the dark, Naruto could see Kakashi's mask shift as he smiled. "I don't really want you to kill me either." The silver-haired jounin was quiet for a moment and then said, "We'll keep an eye on her and I'll alert Hokage-sama to the danger. Next time, tell me before you start acting on your suspicions."

This time it was Naruto's turn to smile. "You think pretending to be a drunk and following her home so I could practically accuse her of treason was too much?"

"Maybe a little, but she'll probably just think you're a dumb, overprotective genin. She's known a few of them over the years."

Naruto nodded and then started to walk back to his apartment. After only a few steps he stopped and looked back at Kakashi. Things were so weird and he didn't have an explanation for them. He'd been thinking lately that perhaps he'd done something that had changed who Orochimaru disguised himself as. He _had_, after all, told Kabuto off before the first test, perhaps that had caused the change in plans or maybe it was some other little event that had snowballed into something this large. With Rin not acting terribly devious and seeming sincere in her assertion that she considered Team Seven to be like family, with Kabuto not doing anything that a spy like him ought to be doing – he hadn't met with a single person besides Ino since the end of the second test – and with all the other little changes that he'd seen (along with who knows how many that he'd missed), the time had come to lay his cards on the table.

"Things are weird, sensei," he said softly. "I don't know if anything I've been telling you guys is right anymore."

Kakashi was quiet for a moment and then said, "There have been some deviations from what you said would occur."

"Ever since the forest, I've been wondering if I might have been wrong all along. Maybe I'm not really from the future of this timeline. Maybe I'm from some other reality where things happen the way I've been telling you they would. Maybe here we weren't even supposed to be Team Seven and all those things that I thought would happen weren't supposed to. The only thing I've even really gotten right has been your test, Ibiki's last question, and some of the stuff that happened in the Wave Country. It's been months… that's not a lot compared to how often I've been wrong."

This time, Kakashi was quiet for so long that Naruto almost wondered if he was ever going to respond at all. Finally, he said, "Maybe you're right. Maybe this isn't where you came from so nothing you say is guaranteed to be right. But that doesn't mean we should take any chances. You've been right about some things, that can't be denied. Just because we don't know when you'll turn out to be right and when you'll be wrong, doesn't mean that we can afford to ignore your warnings. Orochimaru might not have shown up when you thought he would, but he could still be planning to attack. Rin and Kabuto might not be traitors, but someone else might be. We just don't know. We have to plan for the worst and hope for the best." Kakashi took a deep breath and then added, "Personally, I hope you're wrong about everything."

Naruto nodded and then turned to leave. "Me too."

ooo

As the blond disappeared into the night, Kakashi let his eye stray up to a nearby rooftop where an adult sized shadow detached itself from a wall and hurried after him. He'd known the man was there, too far away to hear what was being said, but close enough to keep an eye on them.

Probably Naruto knew the ANBU was there as well.

_'Even Hokage-sama isn't taking any chances with Naruto,'_ the jounin thought as he considered whether or not it would be wise to continue on his original destination.

His feelings for Naruto had become strange over the past week and a half. In a way, he sometimes felt like Naruto was a peer, but at the same time, he was just a little boy and a disturbingly strange one at that. It had taken some time to let go of his suspicions of the boy; his claim of being from the future was, after all, improbable at best. The problem was that it _did_ explain some things, important things.

It also gave him an excuse to restore his faith in his mentor's son, something that was probably more important to him than he'd like to admit.

And yet, Naruto wasn't right about everything. Not even close. There had been no contact between Kabuto and anyone from Suna. The Sand-nin were all acting exactly as they should given that they were staying in a village that was relatively foreign to them. Not only had none of them so much as spoken to anyone from Otogakure, but there was no evidence whatsoever that they were planning any sort of betrayal at all. Not that that meant they _weren't_, but it was hard to believe that there were no signs that could even be interpreted as potentially linked to some sort of plot.

In fact, there was more evidence that the ninja from Iwagakure were part of some sort of betrayal. Two of them had been caught in an area that was – technically – off limits, though their excuse for being there had eventually checked out.

The missing evidence for an Oto-Suna alliance was a large mistake that Kakashi had difficulty reconciling. If Naruto was from the future and he was right, there should have been something, even if it took a bit of a stretch in logic to make the connection.

And then there was Rin.

Kakashi had seen it in Naruto's eyes the moment he introduced her. It was brief, the blond was good at hiding his emotions, but in that second of being open, it had been plain as day. That level of hatred and dread… there was no missing it. Outside of the one he'd given, what reason could Naruto possibly have to react like that to her?

It still wasn't real solid proof to back up Naruto's claim, but it was a pretty strange thing for him to make up on the spot like that if he was lying about being from the future.

Kakashi felt himself being pulled in two different directions. One led him in the direction he'd been heading, to visit his friend. The other would take him back to his own apartment to ponder Naruto's latest revelation. It almost felt like going forward would be the same as dismissing Naruto's claims and going back would be to fully accept them.

Kakashi wished he could just stay where he was and take a middle path so he kept his options open… but it would be silly to stand in the road all night.

"It would only be to keep an eye on her," he told himself. Even if Naruto was right, those events wouldn't happen for years and there was no real proof that Rin had anything to do with it. If she had, perhaps there was still time to keep her from going down that road.

And, in the end, that was what was important. She hadn't committed the crimes yet, so he could still save her if she needed it. He couldn't abandon her, not again. If it cost him his life… that was a price he was willing to pay.

Kakashi turned and walked to Rin's hotel room.

ooo

Three days later, Naruto was bored. There were plenty of things to do, of course, but none of them seemed to hold his attention the way they had at the beginning of the month. Gaara trained by himself or sat around staring off into space. Rin worked with Sakura on medical ninjutsu and the occasional genjutsu. Kabuto trained at random places, occasionally being joined by Ino, but never did anything that could be seen as 'treacherous.' Kakashi and Sasuke continued to work on taijutsu and Chidori.

Were it not for the fact that four of the people he routinely spied on were potential traitors and murderers he would have concluded that they were some of the most boring people he'd ever stalked.

Not that he planned on no longer sending out clones to watch them, that was out of the question, but he was no longer filled with the nervous energy that came from thinking that he might have to step in and save his friends from danger at any second. His targets were all potentially dangerous; they just weren't imminently dangerous, apparently… unless that was just what they wanted him to think…

Naruto shook his head, such thoughts were a bit more paranoid than he generally liked to be. He'd keep his eyes open, but he would also try not to assume too much. Assumptions could get innocent people killed and, to make matters more confusing, he wasn't all that sure who was innocent and who wasn't.

He stopped at the edge of a field and looked around for a moment before finding what he hoped would help him with his boredom. It had been a lot harder to find them than he'd thought it would be and there had been a bit of _unpleasantness_ outside the Hyuuga gates when he tried to get Hyuuga Masatami to cough up the location. He would have to apologize to Hinata when he saw her, he was sure her father was going to be told about this little incident.

Naruto had expected this little trip to take about thirty minutes less than it had, he was probably going to be late to his lunch date with Sasuke and Sakura. The three of them hadn't seen each other since the night they met Rin – or at least they hadn't seen him – and so they'd made arrangements to meet at Ichiraku. Given that neither Sakura nor Sasuke were especially fond of ramen, Naruto was touched that they'd chosen that as the place to eat.

"Again!" a very authoritative sounding Kurenai barked at her student, waking Naruto from his thoughts. Hinata immediately delivered a very impressive series of punches and kicks to the practice posts in front of her. Naruto noticed, with some interest, that none of her movements came from anything resembling Juuken.

Kurenai gave another order and Naruto smiled at the sight. Over the years he'd almost forgotten that she could be like this. It was much easier to remember her physical beauty or her impressive genjutsu talent than it was to remember the way she acted when she was in charge of a group of genin. As he walked closer, he could make out the sheen of sweat on Hinata's red face. She'd probably been doing this for a while.

Hinata was just about to attack the post again when Kurenai told her to stop.

"Can I do something for you, Naruto?" the brown haired kunoichi asked somewhat suspiciously.

Naruto put on his best smile and said, "I was just wondering if Hinata-chan would like a sparing partner or something."

"She's got two of them, dumb ass," Kiba answered. He and Akamaru were sitting in the shade just beyond Kurenai, while Shino was standing in the tree that he had probably been practicing walking up and down.

"Yeah, but I don't think Shino and Akamaru can give her the sort of experience that I can," Naruto replied with a wicked grin.

"N-Naruto-kun," Hinata said in a soft, but somewhat reproachful, voice, "Kiba-kun has b-been very helpful to me, a-as have Akamaru and Shino-kun."

"Also, there is the chance that you two will face each other at some point," Shino said as he lightly dropped from the branches, "it would be unwise to train together."

Naruto nodded. "I guess that's true, but I'm not here to spy on Hinata-chan or anything like that. I just want to help her get ready for whoever she fights. I don't have any intention of fighting her in the finals. If we face each other, I'll probably forfeit."

"Why?" Kurenai asked.

Naruto gave her a perplexed look, thinking the answer obvious. "Because Hinata-chan is my friend," he told her. "Plus, I don't really care about making Chuunin."

"Then why'd you enter the Exam?" Kiba asked.

Naruto shrugged. "Everyone else was entering."

Kurenai gave him a dubious look at that, but didn't press him farther. Instead, she turned to Hinata and said, "It's up to you. Part of becoming a chuunin is learning to make difficult decisions… not that this one should be that difficult."

Hinata's face, already a bit pink from her workout, flushed as all eyes turned towards her. "Um, I… I do not mind training with N-Naruto-kun… though I don't want him to f-forfeit if we face each other in the finals."

Kurenai bowed her head in understanding and turned back to Naruto. "You may spar with Hinata, but that's it. I'm not training you and don't let me catch you watching her other training or anything like that."

Naruto smiled at the still-suspicious tone in her voice. "Hinata-chan and I are pretty different ninja; I doubt it would help me anyway."

Kurenai had Hinata stretch a little – offhandedly telling Naruto that it might not be a bad idea for him to do the same – and then had the two of them stand in front of each other as she set some ground rules. Naruto almost laughed when she told them – while looking at him – that she would stop the fight if she saw either of them try to cause a serious injury to the other. He actually did laugh when she mentioned it again a few seconds later.

"Begin whenever you are ready," Kurenai said at last and the two genin shifted into their starting stances.

Naruto's lackadaisical stance made him look somewhat out of place standing in front of someone using the perfectly balanced Juuken stance, but Hinata was well aware of what Naruto could do with his unorthodox form. She shifted her arm ever so slightly in one direction and turned her front foot in a little more.

Naruto's eyes widened. She was shifting out of Juuken, or at least out of _traditional_ Juuken.

Hinata activated her Byakugan and Naruto felt his muscles tense. He had no idea how good she'd gotten having only been able to give her the bare bones basics – if even that – of Neji's variation on Juuken, but he wanted to find out. He'd come almost on a whim, just looking for something to do and wanting to see how she was progressing, now his lunch date with his teammates was completely forgotten. Even if it meant showing off a little in front of Kiba, Shino, and Kurenai, Naruto planned to see just how far Hinata had gotten and what areas would need shoring up before she faced Lee or Neji in the second round.

Suddenly, a strange expression came over Hinata's face. The veins around her eyes relaxed and she bowed apologetically. "F-forgive me, Naruto-kun," she whispered, "but…"

Naruto's eyes caught movement behind Hinata as her voice trailed off. Tilting his head to the side so he could see around her, he found Hyuuga Neji marching towards them. Tenten was walking slightly behind him and not looking all that pleased about it either.

"Hinata-sama," Neji said with a barely polite bow, "your father wishes to see you." He glanced at Naruto and his eyes narrowed slightly as he added, "Now."

Hinata nodded, but Kurenai put a hand on her shoulder before the young kunoichi could move. "Hold on, why does he want to see her?"

Neji stared at Naruto for a second longer and then slowly let his eyes rise up to meet Kurenai's. "That is between Hiashi-sama and Hinata-sama."

"Hinata is _my_ student, if he's going to pull her away from her training, he better have a damn good reason for it."

Neji gave a very small shrug and then said, "He mentioned something about Hinata-sama being associated with… unsavory characters. I believe he wishes to discuss this with her and also to arrange to have a Hyuuga assist her in some additional training. If you have a complaint, you'll have to take it up with him."

His voice was calm through out, but there was something about the way that he said "Hinata-sama" that made her name sound like a bad word.

Naruto bristled. "If you have something to say, say it."

Neji looked at him and raised an eyebrow questioningly. "The only thing I have to say is that Hinata-sama needs to return home to see her father. I was called away from my own training to deliver the message," his eyes shifted towards Hinata in a way that let everyone know who he considered responsible for the interruption, "the longer she delays the more of my time she wastes."

"Of course, Neji-nii-san," Hinata said quickly. "I am ready to leave now."

Before they could leave, however, another voice called out. "Hey, Naruto!"

Everyone turned towards the sound as Sakura jogged up to them. Naruto glanced up at the sun and grimaced. He'd spent more time than he realized looking for Hinata.

"I'm late?"

Sakura smiled at him. "Only by a little so far. I ran into Sasuke-kun on the way back from training and he said he was probably going to be late too and that I should come find you." She looked at the group and smiled awkwardly. "Uh, sorry for yelling. Hi, everyone."

Neji sighed and shook his head. "Let's go, Hinata-sama. The longer we stay, the more likely we are to run into more annoyances."

Naruto spun around and grabbed the older boy by the arm. "There's no need to be rude," he growled.

Neji looked down at Naruto's hand and then stared coldly into the blond's eyes. "It is you who is being rude. I am only trying to take Hinata-sama back to her father as I was ordered to do because _you_ caused a scene in front of our home."

Naruto tried to think of something he could say that didn't involve any information he wasn't technically supposed to know, but nothing really came to mind. He released Neji with a slight shove, but continued glaring at the older boy. "I know you're actually a good guy, deep down, but if I find out that you're being mean to Hinata-chan I'm going kick your ass, got it?"

Neji snorted and shook his head. "Come, Hinata-sama."

Tenten gave Naruto a strange, almost apologetic smile, bowed to the rest of the group and then followed after the two Hyuuga.

Naruto watched them go for a moment and then yelled, "Hey, Hinata-chan! My team is having lunch at Ichiraku if you want to come when you're done."

Hinata turned and nodded, a small smile appearing on her face.

When the three genin were out of sight, Naruto turned to Sakura and said, "Ready to go?"

Sakura sighed. "You can't just invite Hinata and not her team, dummy." She looked at the remaining members of Team Eight and said, "You are welcome to join us as well."

"Akamaru and I don't like ramen," Kiba replied with a shrug.

"I have already made other arrangements," Shino added with a small bow.

"If he remembered, I should have other plans as well," Kurenai told them with a grin. She looked down at Naruto and said, "Thanks for sticking up for Hinata there… If you want to train with us tomorrow, this is where we usually meet." She paused for a second and then added, "I won't train you, but I won't stop you from being here."

Naruto wasn't sure how she could not train him if he was there, but didn't bother to question her sudden kindness. If nothing else, at least it would give him something to do when he got bored of watching Kabuto, Rin, and the ninja from Suna _not_ do anything suspicious.

He bowed politely and said, "Thank you, Kurenai-sensei. I might take you up on that." Then he and Sakura headed towards Ichiraku. Sakura was strangely quiet as they walked.

ooo

By the time they got to Ichiraku, Sasuke was waiting for them and had even managed to get a table. The lunch rush was mostly over, so they probably wouldn't have had much trouble finding seats anyway, but tables outside the ramen bar were usually quickly filled by those who didn't feel like sitting at the bar.

A few minutes later, they were sitting at the small table with their steaming bowls of edible euphoria in front of them.

Naruto and Sasuke dug in with gusto, but Sakura only picked at her food while shuffling her feet along the ground. Finally she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said, "Naruto, can I ask you something?"

Naruto shrugged and poured himself a glass of water as he took a break from shoveling food into his mouth. "What's up?"

She fidgeted nervously before saying, "It's sort of personal…"

"Uh-oh." He was instantly on guard. Sakura didn't usually ask personal questions – at least not of him – and when she did, she usually wasn't nervous about asking them. Whatever she was going to ask him was probably not going to be something he wanted to talk about, which meant that it was probably something she wouldn't let him _not_ talk about.

Sakura bit her lip, adding to his apprehension. "Well, I was thinking about it at the training grounds with Team Eight, but I didn't want to bring it up in front of everyone. Honestly, I've sort of suspected for a while. I mean, after our mission to Kogane and really before that even…" She paused, steeled herself for what she wanted to say and then went on. "It's just something I've noticed about you and I was _hoping_ that you wouldn't mind talking about it."

Naruto racked his brain for what she could possibly be referring to. The fact that it had happened at some point after the mission to the mining town, but also a little before that were his only clues to go on and they weren't much. Then he remembered what had happened during the fight with the missing-nin. She'd seen him stabbed through the chest! Sure, she'd later accepted that it was all a genjutsu, but Sakura was smart enough to see through a lie like that. Did that mean…

Naruto's eyes widened. He'd been planning on telling them eventually, probably right after the Chuunin Exam and the whole mess that was supposed to follow it. If he had to fight Orochimaru or Kabuto or someone fairly high level, it would be somewhat obvious anyway. And then there was his potential fight with Gaara to be considered. Really, there was no way he could get out of telling them at that point. "Oh… _THAT_. Uh, look, I was going to tell you when I thought you might be ready, honest."

Sakura looked perplexed. She glanced at Sasuke, who shrugged, and then looked back at Naruto. "Why would you think I wasn't ready?"

He almost laughed at the absurdity of her question. There was a demon sealed in his belly, not exactly the sort of small potatoes subject that was discussed casually over dinner or used as small talk when a conversation reached a lull. "Well, it's sort of… big, you know?"

Sakura grinned and shook her head, a small giggle slipping through her lips. "It's not that big, actually it's kind of… obvious."

Naruto's mouth fell open. _Obvious?_ She thought it was _obvious_ that he was the Kyuubi's container? He thought he'd done a pretty good job of keeping a low profile with the exception of the Kagome mission. "Really?"

Sakura smiled sweetly and tucked a strand of pink hair behind her ear. "Yeah, I only asked because I wanted to make sure."

Naruto leaned back in his chair and stared at her in wonder. She was so calm about the whole thing! It was like it wasn't a big deal to her at all. He glanced at Sasuke, who didn't seem upset or confused by the conversation, so apparently he had also guessed. It was really impressive. Clearly he'd underestimated how much they'd changed since he'd woken up in the past. "Wow," he said at last, "you figured that out a lot faster than la… er, than I thought you would. You're not freaked out?"

Sakura frowned. "Freaked out? Of course not, I'm excited for you."

Now it was Naruto's turn to frown. "Excited?"

"Of course, it's wonderful."

Naruto wet his lips and blinked in confusion. "I don't know what to say," he admitted after a moment. "I mean, _excited_ was hardly the way I expected you to react. I didn't think you'd hate me like the adults do, but…"

Sakura gawked at him and leaned forward so she could look him dead in the eye. "The adults hate you for _that_?"

"Well, yeah," Naruto mumbled, scratching the back of his head and trying to figure out where the disconnect was. "You had to have seen the way they look at me."

"But… I mean, it's not like it's _that_ big of a deal."

Naruto snorted and tried not to laugh. "It's a pretty big deal. Hell, there's a whole law just to keep them from saying anything."

"A law? What are you talking about?" This time the confused look on Sakura's face was enough to make Naruto realize that she really had _no _idea what he was talking about, which was either a very good thing or an exceptionally bad one considering how long the conversation had gone already.

He let out a slow breath. He planned on telling them, but if the conversation had gone on much longer he might have simply let it slip that he thought they were talking about him being a jinchuriki which – given that they were _not_ talking about that – could have been a slightly larger revelation than he wanted. When he told them, he wanted to do it in a way that eased them into the idea; he did not want to simply dump it on them without warning.

"What are _you_ talking about?" he asked. If this had nothing to do with the Kyuubi, then what was all this 'personal question' crap that she was apparently so nervous about?

"You and Hinata," Sakura replied, still confused. "What did you think we were talking about?"

He and Hinata was a far safer topic in his mind even if he had no idea why it would be considered a 'personal question.' Glad for any sort of distraction from the _other _topic they'd almost been discussing, he quickly asked, "What about me and Hinata?"

Sakura pursed her lips, probably aware that he was changing the subject, but was willing to let his weirdness slide once more. "Well, you know," she said after a moment's hesitation, "…that you like her."

Naruto made a funny face and shrugged, picking up his chopsticks. "Of course I like her; she's my friend."

Sakura watched as he took lifted a small blob of noodles to his mouth, waiting for him to elaborate before finally she said, "Not like that. I mean that you _like_ her like her."

Naruto sputtered, coughed, and swallowed half the food in his mouth without chewing it, leaving him gasping for air. It took a while, but when he recovered he looked up at her and said, "What are you talking about? No, I don't. I mean, I do… like her, that is, but not like that…"

Sakura shook her head, not buying it. "Then why do you always act the way you do around her?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" he demanded, starting to feel a little annoyed with her stupidity.

Sakura shrugged noncommittally. "You just sort of act... _different_ around her. It's like you're always trying to protect her or something."

"I do not." He was on his feet now and definitely starting to feel angry as well as strangely warm around the collar.

Sakura was on her feet as well, not backing down. For whatever reason she was determined to force him to see the true nature of his feelings for Hinata… or at least the true nature that she'd decided upon. "Yes you do. You train with her in your free time, you talked with her more than anyone after the second part of the exam, and there was that thing with Neji this afternoon… plus you always brighten up when you see her."

Naruto shook his head in annoyance. "Look, I don't like her like that. That would just be wrong on so many levels," he insisted.

"Why?" Sakura demanded. "Hinata's cute and she's really nice. What's not to like?"

"She's just…" he floundered as he searched for the right way to put it. Finally, he let himself fall back into his seat as he said, "I mean… she's only thirteen and… uh…"

Sakura laughed as she also sat back down, shaking her head at his excuse. "You're barely two months older than her, not exactly a huge difference."

"I know but… it's just… I can't look at Hinata-chan like that, alright? It's just… not right."

For a long moment Sakura was quiet and then her eyes widened. "Ohhhhhh. Geez, Naruto, I'm sorry. I… well, I just didn't think that you were… I mean, you _never_ gave me a reason to think that, but… I guess it does explain some things…"

"Huh?" Naruto just couldn't seem to get a handle on the conversation. Every time he thought he knew what Sakura was talking about, she threw him a new curve and seemed to go off in a totally different direction.

Sakura took a deep breath and covered her hand with her face. "I just wouldn't have ever guessed that you were… you know… gay."

Naruto rocked back in his seat and stared at her in horror. "I'm not gay!" he yelled far louder than he should have, earning him several very strange looks from the people around them.

Now Sakura was getting angry, apparently just as annoyed as he was with the near continuous disconnect between them. "Then what the hell are you talking about, moron?"

Naruto looked away, suddenly wishing he could be somewhere else. Hard as it was to believe, he actually wished he had accidentally blurted something out about Kyuubi so they could talk about that instead. "It's complicated," he said at last.

Sakura sighed and shook her head. "Well, you better figure it out quickly, because you're messing with her heart and that's not right."

"I'm doing _what_?"

The pink haired kunoichi looked pleadingly at Sasuke, who shrugged and said nothing. Finding no help from the one person Naruto was fairly certain would absolutely _never_ help her in this particular conversation, Sakura picked up her chopsticks and began stirring the noodles around in her bowl. "Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut… this is between you and her."

Naruto scowled and started eating again, glad that she was dropping the whole stupid thing. "First smart thing you've said in a –ouch!" Sakura's foot connected solidly with his shin under the table.

"If you don't like her, you better tell her!" she hissed.

Naruto blinked. Wasn't this conversation supposed to be over? "Why?"

Sakura dropped her chopsticks and stared at him. "You don't know?"

Naruto was still trying to figure out why this conversation hadn't ended when Sakura said she should have kept her mouth shut. "Know _what_?" he demanded.

Sakura banged her head on the table, not caring about the scene she was making or the people staring at the two loud genin in annoyance. "Shit! I'm such an idiot! No, strike that, _you're_ the idiot… I'm just an idiot for not realizing what an idiot you are! How can you possibly be this clueless?"

Naruto wanted to join her in banging his head on the table, but he wasn't sure the wood could take much more punishment. "Are you going to start making sense anytime soon or should I just go home?"

Sakura glared at him. "Hinata l…" her voice trailed off.

"She what?"

"No," Sakura shook her head, "I shouldn't say it."

"Why not?"

"Because," she replied in a voice that made it sound like he should have already known the answer, "it's not my secret."

Naruto let out a big sigh and shrugged in exasperation. "That's never stopped you befo— ouch!" She kicked him again. "Quit doing that!"

Sakura ignored his complaint, instead letting her head fall into her hands and pulling on her hair. "Ugh… geez what a mess.

Naruto turned to Sasuke. "What the hell is she talking about?"

Sasuke snorted. "You really are an idiot if you don't know. I didn't even pay attention to her when we were in the Academy and _I_ know."

"Know _what_?"

"Hinata likes you, dumbass, the way Sakura thought you liked her."

"Sasuke!" Sakura hissed through clenched teeth as she stared at her crush.

He shrugged. "It's not like she'd have ever told him, at least this way he knows."

Naruto sucked in a deep breath as his stomach dropped into his feet, oozed out of his sandals, and began to burrow a hole in the ground so it could keep falling. "…You're lying," he whispered.

Sakura sighed resignedly. "…he's not," she said quietly. "Hinata's liked you since she started at the Academy. That's why she always watched you and got real quiet when you tried to talk to her. I just figured, with the way you talk to her and then when you asked her to come eat with us, that you must have felt the same way…"

Naruto stood up, his chopsticks falling from his hands and clattering loudly on the table. Suddenly, he wasn't hungry, not even for ramen. "If this is joke," he hissed, "it's not funny. Hinata-chan and I are _friends_. That's it. Both of us know it. Maybe she watched me when we were younger, but that was just because I was always doing stupid things to get attention, and maybe she got quiet, but Hinata-chan is _always_ quiet. Believe me, if she felt that way, I would know…"

Sakura shook her head and looked away, folding her arms across her chest. "How can someone so dumb be such a good ninja?"

"This has nothing to do with being a good ninja," Naruto retorted, "you're just living in a fantasy world. Hinata-chan and I are not, and will never be, anything more than…" a small gasp came from behind him, Naruto turned just in time to see Hinata disappear into a small crowd of people. "Shit."

Sakura looked down at the table. "I'm sorry…"

Naruto opened his mouth to tell her that she should be sorry or to say… something, but he couldn't find the words. It wasn't Sakura's fault she was stupid about this sort of thing. Half the girls he'd ever known got dumb about other people's love lives from time to time; it was like it was in their nature or something. Sometimes they were right, sometimes they were wrong, mostly they were just annoying about it. It was just unfortunate that Sakura happened to be annoying about it right when Hinata walked up behind them.

"It's not your fault," he whispered. "I'll go explain…" his voice trailed off as he tried to think of what, exactly, he could say to explain why he and his teammates had been talking about Hinata and her personal life, but drew a blank. If Sakura and Sasuke were right and she did have some sort of little childhood crush on him, what could he possibly say to her?

"Why?" Sasuke asked.

Naruto gave him a confused look. "Because she's upset."

"If you don't have those sorts of feelings for her, then it's no big deal. She needed to know anyway," Sasuke pointed out.

"Yeah, but… but she was upset."

Sasuke shrugged. "She'll get over it. Better that she knows now than to have her finding out if she ever worked up the nerve to try to do something about it. This might be the kindest way for her to learn how you feel."

Naruto lowered his head, closed his eyes, and then made up his mind. "I'm going after her."

"Why?"

"Because I'm not a cold, heartless bastard!" the blond growled, and then dashed across the street and leapt onto the nearest rooftop. In his haste, he didn't get to see Sakura give Sasuke a very dirty look and then get up and leave the Uchiha alone at the table with three bowls of food that he didn't really like in the first place.

ooo

Naruto caught up with Hinata about half way back to the Hyuuga compound. He had to admit that she'd gotten impressively fast in the last week and a half, at least in comparison to where she'd been before the Chuunin Exam started. He'd so underestimated her speed, in fact, that he might not have found her before she reached her home had she not stopped.

When he found her, she was leaning against a wall, breathing hard and apparently trying to compose herself.

Not a good sign.

"Hinata-chan?" he said softly as he reached out to touch her shoulder.

Her head snapped up at his voice, her eyes wide and her face flushed.

"Are you okay?"

"Y-yes, N-Naruto-kun," she whispered. "I-I'm fine…"

She didn't look fine. "I'm sorry about…"

"N-none of th-that," she said so quietly he had to strain to hear her. "I-it was… f-foolish of m-me to… to think that you…"

"No!" Naruto shouted louder than he meant to as his frustration with the whole screwed up mess began to get the better of him. "No, it wasn't foolish of you… I mean…" he stopped and tried to think what exactly he _did_ mean, but was left with only one word. "Shit."

He looked at her almost pleadingly, hoping that she would throw him some sort of bone to help him figure out what to say so that this didn't mess everything up for him. If she really had some sort of crush on him while he was at the Academy, then his sudden interest in hanging out with her and training with her might have been taken as romantic interest in her. The whole situation was probably his fault.

Naruto sighed and leaned his back against the wall Hinata had been resting against. He wished he was older and had the Sakura or Hinata from the future to discuss this with. They'd understand and help him out… with only minimal teasing from Sakura.

Thinking about the Hinata from the future brought Naruto around to a different sort of thought. Would she have also had a crush on him at the Academy? She'd never said anything about it. Probably this was another of those random divergences from his original timeline. The two of them had spent a lot of time talking about their childhoods, little jokes and stories of silly things they had done or had happened to them. Hinata had told him plenty about her mother and what she could remember doing with her before she died. He'd mostly told her about his adventures pulling pranks on people. They never really talked too much about their Academy days because they both knew most of those stories.

He would have known about this sort of thing. She'd told him plenty of other childhood secrets and dreams, something as childish as a playground crush would probably have come up when he was telling her about the day he'd decided that Sakura was the woman for him.

_"A childish dream that I held onto for far too long, I fear, Naruto-sama."_

Her words hit him like a thunderbolt from on high and sucked the air from his lungs. It couldn't be… could it? That conversation had happened years from now. They'd barely seen each other at all in the first three years after graduation. Surely she would have found someone else…

But Naruto knew that Hinata had never dated anyone, had never shown any sort of romantic interest in anyone, had never even told him a story about love and loss outside of the loss of her friends and family. He'd never thought about why she didn't tell that sort of story or share that sort of secret, it was just something that they didn't talk about. Did that mean that _this_ was what she was referring to all those years ago… in the future?

Even as he thought it, he knew the truth. He could see it now. She'd kept from telling him so he wouldn't feel pressured into helping her out of her arranged marriage. Did she not know him? He would have been only too happy to marry her if it meant that she ended up with someone she wanted to be with. It might have been a bit awkward, but he could have been a good husband to her, better than that bastard she ended up, that was for sure. He understood that romantic love was important in a marriage, and he might not have been great for that part, but the love between friends could have been enough, couldn't it?

Any sort of affection would have been better than what she ended up with.

"Damn it," he whispered, "What were you thinking?"

"N-Naruto-kun?" Hinata gasped in surprise, thinking he was talking about her… which he was, sort of.

"Not you," he said quickly, "I was just… it doesn't matter, I guess." He took a deep breath and pushed the memories of the past, future, or whatever it was away and then turned to face her. "Hinata-chan, if there's ever a time in the future where I can help you, in _any_ way, tell me exactly what I should do, okay? I don't care if you think it would be an inconvenience to me, or weird, or whatever, just tell me what it is and don't rely on me being smarter than I am."

Hinata looked very confused, but she nodded slowly anyway. "O-okay."

"Also, don't think that this has anything to do with another girl, like Sakura-chan or anyone else," he paused and thoughts of Sakura's earlier confusion flashed through his brain. "And, just to be clear, I'm _not_ gay… definitely, definitely not gay."

With those things out of the way for the moment – though Naruto was sure he'd be spending quite some time thinking long and hard about every conversation he could remember having with Hinata in the future, looking for any clue about her feelings towards him, and wondering what he'd done to make Sakura think he might be into guys – he turned his attention to the more immediate problem of making sure the whole mess didn't cause too much damage to what he'd been working on since waking up in the past. If Hinata had those feelings for him during their Academy days, and they were obvious enough that even someone like Sasuke noticed, it would be hard to believe that other Hyuuga hadn't caught on as well, especially now that he'd been seen hanging out with her away from school. All it would take is one or two Branch members reporting what they saw outside the gates or even a Main family member spotting them together at some other point and her feelings for him would probably be known to the clan council.

"What did your dad want to talk to you about?" Naruto asked, almost on a hunch.

Hinata turned a slightly darker shade of red. "Nothing," she lied, badly.

"It was about me." It wasn't a question.

Hinata nodded. "Father… he… he is c-concerned about m-me spending… time w-with you…" she whispered.

Naruto ran his hand over his face from top to bottom, finishing with it covering his mouth as he sucked in a deep breath through his nose. They knew. They knew about her feelings for him. They would see her silly little childhood crush on village pariah as a sign of her being unsuitable to lead the clan. He was trying to help her, but was also compromising her standing in the eyes of the Hyuuga at the same time. His stupid blindness might have ruined things for her if Sakura hadn't pointed it out to him.

He'd probably have to apologize to Sakura for yelling at her the next time he saw her.

"Listen," he said after letting his mind run wild with the thoughts of the disasters that could result from this mess, "I know what you think you feel about me, but this is a crush you should probably get over as quickly as possible." He paused for a moment and then added, "You're… you're a great girl. I mean, really, really great. And beautiful, too. A guy would have to be stupid not to just fall head over heels for you, but… this is a lot more complicated than you know – _a lot_ more complicated – and you deserve someone who comes with less… baggage."

"Naruto-kun, I—"

Naruto held up his hand and silenced her. "Please, just… just hear me out. There are things that you don't really know about me, important things that I can't tell you about right now. At least one of them is the sort of thing that would make members of your family… upset… if they thought you were interested in me… maybe even if they just thought you were friends with me." He sighed and said, "I really am an idiot, you know?"

Hinata smiled weakly. "I-I… don't think so."

Naruto grinned at her naïve kindness. "Are we still friends?"

Hinata gave him a shocked look. "Y-yes… th-that is, if y-you still want to be friends."

"I don't know if I could stop wanting to be your friend if I tried." He smiled fondly at her and said, "You're an amazing person, Hinata-chan, and you're only going to keep getting more amazing as you get older."

Hinata blushed – a mannerism of hers that he'd always found strangely endearing, but it suddenly worried him a little now that he knew what it meant – and shook her head as she looked down at the ground. "N-no I'm n—"

Naruto's finger poked her in the forehead and then pushed on it until she was looking up at him. "When I look at you," he said softly, "I feel like I can see who you're going to be. Trust me, amazing doesn't even begin to describe you. You'll be strong, and kind, and way smarter than a certain blond Hokage who doesn't know his head from his ass." He paused and chuckled at the slightly shocked expression on her face.

It was a good thing Naruto's finger was still pressed against Hinata's forehead. The words coming out of his mouth were obviously embarrassing her and her natural reaction when she felt that way was to look down, but he wanted her to see that he was being honest. He needed Hinata to believe in herself and to think that she was worthy of praise or at least know that she wasn't _un_worthy of it. If he was to have any chance of changing the Hyuuga clan in the future the way he'd promised the original Hinata and Neji, then he needed the clan to have the sort of leader who could help him.

Hinata was that sort of leader. He couldn't let her think that he didn't return her feelings because of anything that had to do with her. It wasn't her fault he happened to think of himself as about twenty years older than her. If they were the same age, he probably wouldn't have been totally opposed to seeing her as a romantic interest. She was kind, and friendly, and pretty in a little kid sort of way – what more could a thirteen year old ask for in a girlfriend?

There was a long moment of silence between the two of them during which Naruto finally moved his finger away from her head, though by this point she seemed to have given up on trying to look down. Then he asked, "Do you think we could just pretend this whole messed up conversation never happened and that Sakura kept her big mouth shut?"

A small smile appeared on Hinata's face and then she asked, "W-what conversation?"

Naruto smiled back. "Will it be okay for me to help you train with Kurenai-sensei tomorrow?"

"I th-think the invitation is s-still open."

"Ah… good," Naruto was starting to feel a bit awkward now. After everything that had happened, it seemed like there should be some way to end the conversation smoothly, but he couldn't think of how to do so. Just saying 'bye' seemed inappropriate, but he couldn't really hug her or anything either. He was stuck.

As the two of them stood in uncomfortable silence, each looking for something to say, Naruto's mind began to return to the Hinata in the future and a conversation that would have gone a much different way if he'd been observant enough to even _think_ that Hinata might be talking about him being her way out of the arranged marriage. It had simply never occurred to him that she might feel like that and so he'd never taken any of the clues as anything more than Hinata's personal mannerisms.

"I really am an idiot, aren't I?" he said again with a sigh.

Hinata's smile was a little larger this time. "Maybe a little…" she admitted.

Somehow, that seemed to wrap everything up. They both said their goodbyes and then headed in opposite directions.

ooo

The remaining weeks before the finals were comparatively uneventful for everyone as no accusations about hidden romances, repressed sexual orientations, or anything else were thrown about. Sakura was graceful in her acceptance of Naruto's apology for his behavior during lunch and did her best to apologize for her own role in the small fiasco. Sasuke didn't care, so apologizing to him was almost like talking to a wall.

Naruto spent a day or two during each of the remaining weeks training with Team Eight and helping Hinata. He no longer went to the Hyuuga compound looking for her, however, choosing instead to just meet her with her teammates at the appointed time. Talking with her was awkward initially, but they soon got over the embarrassment and their friendship returned to normal… or at least seemed to.

There was – fortunately or unfortunately – little to show for all Naruto's time and energy spent spying on Kabuto, Rin, and the ninja from Suna. Kabuto spent most of his time training – half the time being joined by Ino for some reason – or occasionally working with his father in the hospital. Only once did his path cross that of a Sand-nin, but it seemed most likely to be nothing more than a chance encounter as they were both heading in opposite directions and simply happened to walk somewhat close to each other. Neither looked at the other in any significant way that Naruto's clones were able to observe and nothing was seen being exchanged between them.

Gaara was much the same. He occasionally trained with Baki, Temari, and Kankuro, but mostly just kept to himself and ignored anyone and everyone.

Rin spent her days with Sakura working on medical ninjutsu. They healed fish, they healed rabbits, they even healed each other after inflicting small wounds on themselves. It was generally boring to watch and Naruto was glad that he didn't have to go through it personally even if he ended up with all the memories of the boredom.

He still didn't trust Rin, but he had to admit that the possibility was definitely there that she was as good as Kakashi claimed she was. Perhaps she wasn't the same person she'd been in the original timeline or perhaps she hadn't turned traitor yet. It was hard to be sure, but his suspicions of her were gradually easing. He didn't ever get to the point during the month where he was willing to take her up on her offer to tell him more about his mother, but the temptation grew steadily as the time for the Exam drew near.

And then the last day of training came and went. Most spent their time resting, Naruto spent it eating with Team Eight and Team Seven while simultaneously spying on a half dozen people spread throughout the village.

As the sun set and it became time to go home, each of the genin said their goodbyes and headed home until only Sasuke and Naruto were left.

"Tomorrow we're enemies," Sasuke pointed out casually.

Naruto smiled. "Only until you lose."

"Are you ready to fight that Kankuro guy?"

"I don't think it'll be too tough."

"Don't take him lightly, he's Gaara's brother."

"What about you, are you ready to fight Sakura-chan?"

Sasuke looked up at the pink and orange clouds above them and said, "Yes."

"If you hurt her, I'll kick your ass," Naruto warned him.

Sasuke gave him a weird look. "How exactly am I supposed to fight her without hurting her?"

"How about: if you hurt her _too much_,I'll kick your ass?"

Sasuke smiled. "What if she hurts me?"

Naruto shrugged. "I'll congratulate her and make fun of you." He winked at his friend and then added, "I like her more."

Sasuke chuckled, "If you want to kick my ass, you'll have to get past both Kankuro and Temari."

"You don't think Shikamaru can win?"

"I think Shikamaru might blow the whole thing off."

"He might surprise you."

Sasuke snorted and watched with mild interest as a man came out and began lighting paper lanterns hanging from a wire across his storefront. "Don't lose until I face you, got it?"

Naruto stood up and patted his friend on the shoulder as he walked past him, heading towards his apartment. "Same to you."

The month was over and the village was full of foreign and domestic dignitaries and even those who were simply fans of the tournament and the gambling that came along with it. Naruto was still uneasy about the way things were unfolding and the fact that he couldn't seem to get any hard evidence on those he suspected of betrayal, but there was no time to worry about it anymore. Whatever was going to happen, would happen. He'd just have to be ready to lend a hand if or when the invasion began.

The next day, history was going to change, he was sure of it.

o

o

A/N: Well, there you have it. After 24 irritating to write pages, the month is over and the Exam Finals can start. I kind of feel like the last section there was a bit rushed… Actually, I'm not very satisfied with hardly anything that happened in this chapter. My excuse is that I got busy and almost didn't finish (I wrote the last five thousand or so words just today), but I'm not really sure where I'd make changes. The Rin stuff had to happen, the Hinata confusion has been planned for a while, and there really wasn't anything left to do during the month, so I needed that last part to get us all the way through it and onto the Finals… I suppose the long winded Henge no Jutsu stuff at the very beginning could be cleaned up some more, but other than that, I don't know what I could really "fix."

Actually, I change my mind. My excuse is that I went and saw Batman: The Dark Knight twice this week and spent the rest of my time _wishing_ that I was watching it instead of staring at the computer trying to type this chapter! If you haven't seen that movie… well, you're life pretty much sucks (joking, joking). Seriously, leave me a review and then go see the movie (but leave the review first). When you're done, go see it again. It'll only be 5 hours of your life, trust me, you won't find many better things to do with them.

Anyway, this chapter is probably not as awesome as the one before it, but that's what I get for having Jiraiya go searching for Tsunade. I'm sure injecting him into any of the above scenes would have helped them (just imagine the wonders he would have done in the Naruto-Hinata "I just like you as a friend" conversation!)… hmm, maybe not. Hopefully, despite me being a bit rushed here at the end (I'm supposed to get in the car and drive for four hours in another hour and a half and haven't packed yet!) the finished product isn't too rough. It only got one read through, so we'll see how it looks when I get back.

Well, I hope you liked it. If you didn't, I apologize, hopefully future chapters will be better. With all the emotional junk in this chapter out of the way, the next ones should be more fun.

Please review and let me know what you thought… then go see Batman and bask in the Joker's awesomeness.

See you next Friday.


	33. Chapter 32

Chapter 32

o

If Jiraiya had been asked at the beginning of his journey to describe where he expected to find his old teammate, he probably would have come up with something pretty similar to the room he had just entered. Whether that was because he knew Tsunade so well or just because he naturally assumed that it would be his luck that she would pick such a location was hard to say, but regardless the reason, he wasn't surprised by where he now stood.

The room was dimly lit and full of smoke, the smell of stale alcohol and nervous sweat hung in the air, and the shouts of joyous excitement and bitter cries of despair melded together to drown out whatever band was playing somewhere in the haze. Thousands of similar buildings and rooms were scattered throughout the continent, some with better music and lighting, but all looking basically the same at their core.

There was, after all, only so much a proprietor could do to dress up a gambling hall.

Whoever owned this one hadn't bothered to dress it up at all. The foolish desperation of those poor saps who were throwing their savings away in an ill-conceived attempt to win big was on full display for all to see. Many of the people he walked past were probably wearing the only things they had left to their name, and some were probably only allowed to wear it because it could be bad for business to strip someone down to their birthday suits and throw them into the streets. Of course, in this particular gambling hall, _that_ might not be all that bad for business either.

Somewhere in here, if his latest lead was worth what he'd gone through to get it, Tsunade was trying to drown herself in alcohol and debt. Jiraiya was certain he could get even odds on which of those she'd had more of so far this night.

Hopefully, whoever was currently taking her money was smart enough not to try to have her stripped down and thrown into the streets, though it would be funny to watch them try.

The tall shinobi paused at the thought, pulled out a small notebook, and jotted down a quick note. Coming up with new situations to put the protagonist in his books through was hard work, he couldn't afford to let inspiration slide by without writing it down lest he forget.

With that taken care of, he began to make his way carefully through the room, his dark eyes alert and his mind focused on the task at hand. It had taken him a lot longer to find Tsunade than he'd thought it would. Naruto had made it sound like it had only taken a couple of weeks when they did it in the other timeline and that version of him would have been saddled with an obnoxious thirteen year old for the trip. He should have been able to find her much more quickly on his own, but perhaps the difference in the point in time that he'd left to search for her had put her in a town farther away with fewer people between them who were willing to divulge her location.

They definitely weren't anywhere close to a town with a castle for his old teammates to destroy.

Jiraiya pushed the thought aside; he would worry about what the difference meant later. Despite his better judgment, he believed Naruto. If the kid said Tsunade would make a good Hokage, Jiraiya had no doubt she would. Believing Naruto about Tsunade also meant that he believed Orochimaru might try to kill Sarutobi during the Chuunin Exam. He had less than twenty-four hours to find Tsunade, convince her to return, and get her back to the village… and even at top speed it would take them a day and a half to get back to Konoha from here.

They would be late no matter what, which meant that Naruto and Sarutobi would be on their own when the fighting broke out. Fortunately, believing in Naruto also meant that Jiraiya was allowed to believe that the boy would be enough to turn the tide in the battle and hold off Orochimaru until help could arrive.

It had been a long time since he'd let himself believe so much about one person. Strangely, Naruto's father had been the last to have so much faith entrusted to him. Minato's death had shaken Jiraiya to his core. It was like losing a favorite son – or so Jiraiya, having no children of his own, assumed – and it tore a large hole in his heart. That and Orochimaru's defection a few years earlier ended up being more than he could take. He'd left the village, ignored any requests for him to return home, and cut himself off from all meaningful human contact that didn't come with a double D cup and a drunken giggle.

In some ways it was nice to believe again, like a breath of fresh air after years trapped underground. At the same time, it was quite unsettling to place so much hope in a person he didn't really know. Men he'd known for years had let him down and broken his heart, yet here he was allowing himself to believe in a child he barely knew. It was idiotic, but he couldn't help it.

Jiraiya turned his mind away from his concerns and onto more important – and controllable – matters. If Tsunade was in here, it would be difficult to find her without giving her the chance of spotting him first. If she saw him coming, she might escape without him noticing, and then he'd have to start his search all over again.

He needed directions.

His eyes scanned the people around him, looking for the telltale signs of a potential informer. Shifty eyes were usually a good clue, but in a place like this, that described pretty much everyone. A better tell was in the way some stood away from the main groups of people. The ones who knew the sort of information he was looking for would be standing slightly apart, but also carefully watching the crowd. These were usually the spies working for crime syndicates, keeping their eyes on anyone acting or looking suspicious.

The spies who were too good at their job to willingly cough up information were the ones who really didn't stand out. They usually looked like they were actually doing something innocent – or at least typical – rather than openly watching those around them. Those who were more blatant about it were usually on a lower rung of the power ladder and more susceptible to bribery and intimidation.

Jiraiya found his man sitting with his back to the bar, an untouched drink in his hand. The spy was slender, but with a bit of a dumpy belly. His thin hair was oily and just slightly unkempt. He'd be a low level guy, the sort who latched onto the toughest group in town and was only loyal so long as he felt like he was safely with the winning side.

"I'm looking for someone," Jiraiya said casually as he stepped up to the bar and signaled the bartender for a drink.

"Good for you," the spy replied in a bored, dismissive voice, though his eyes were no longer on the crowd.

"People call her 'The Legendary Sucker,'" Jiraiya went on with a small smile. "Have you seen her?"

"Yeah, probably," the man said, "but a lot of people come through here. Most of them are suckers."

Jiraiya pulled a coin from his pocket and placed it in the man's hand. "Do you remember this particular sucker any better now?"

The coin vanished into the man's pocket in an instant. "Blond hair, right? Hangs out with a young, dark-haired woman and a pig? Yeah, I've seen 'em."

Jiraiya put another coin in the man's now outstretched hand. "When?"

"Pretty recently, but it's hard to remember exactly how long ago. Like I said, we get a lot of suckers in here."

Another coin.

"If I _had_ seen her recently, I wouldn't really be allowed to talk about it, you know?" the spy said. "The Legendary Sucker is kind of like a cash cow. The boss doesn't like her being bothered. When people come asking about her, they're usually after her money, and we want her to spend as much as she can here before she moves on."

"Where is she?" Jiraiya asked. He wasn't bothering with the coins anymore. The man would obviously just keep dropping little hints until his money bag was empty and Tsunade was definitely in the building. The clues would have been more concrete if she wasn't.

The man gave his outstretched hand a little shake and grinned at Jiraiya. The Sannin placed his own hand over the spy's and squeezed, not enough to break bones, but close.

"I don't know!" the spy cried out as he tried to pull free from the powerful grasp, ending up on his knees.

Jiraiya looked down at him calmly. "Yes, you do."

The man's beady eyes shifted towards a closed door on the far side of the room. A large, intimidating guard was standing in front of it, scowling threateningly at anyone who got too close. "I… I can't say," he whispered loudly as he clawed uselessly at Jiraiya's nearly closed fist with his free hand.

A light touch brushed against Jiraiya's leg. In an instant, he'd released the spy and his hand shot back and caught hold of a soft mound of flesh. The red-haired woman behind him screeched angrily as he turned to face her, his hand still on her large right breast.

"I don't mind you sticking your hand in my pocket," Jiraiya told her with a wicked smile, "but I'd appreciate you leaving everything in there when you're done."

She was smart enough to look outraged, but her attempt at slapping him was slow and he caught her by the wrist easily. His left hand reluctantly released her breast and reached casually into her loose sleeve, where he found his momentarily stolen money bag. "Next time, don't be so rough. I prefer a lighter touch."

The jig was up and she knew it. "Fine," she snarled, "keep your money. Just let me go."

Jiraiya's smile grew a little larger. "Actually, I think you owe me a little favor."

She spat at his feet. "You already got your jollies groping me, what more do you want?"

The Sannin snorted. "You're chest ain't that great, sweetheart, but I think you can make up the difference by escorting me right over there." He pointed towards the door.

Her eyes widened, apparently she knew what was back there. "Please…" she whimpered.

Jiraiya threw his arm around her shoulder. "Remember to smile," he said and then let out a perfect imitation of a drunken laugh as he began to stagger in the direction of the door, dragging her along.

His nimble-fingered companion played her part half-heartedly, but it was all that he really needed. Actually, he probably could have done it without her; making her walk with him was just for fun. The guard, no matter how good, would be no match for him. Gambling establishments like this one couldn't even afford jounin level protection, let along the sort of ninja who could put up a fight against one of the Sannin.

"Whash, baak dare?" he asked as he reached the guard.

The man's face became stern and the scowl that Jiraiya had seen him use earlier appeared on his lips. "Move along. This room is for VIPs only."

"I'ms a… uh, _BID_… aren't I darlin'?" Jiraiya asked the pickpocket at his side.

She didn't smile. In fact, she mostly just looked scared. No doubt she was envisioning what would happen if the guard decided to treat her as an accomplice and not a conscripted victim.

Jiraiya's fist connected solidly with the man's head, slamming it back with such force that it actually got stuck in the plaster wall behind him.

"I've got just one more favor to ask of you," Jiraiya said to the pickpocket as he released her and stepped over to the door. "What's your name?"

The woman brushed her red hair off of her shoulders and scowled at him. With the guard down, her confidence had returned to a degree. "Azami."

Jiraiya frowned thoughtfully and then shook his head. "Nah, that won't work. In my next book, you'll be 'Akane,' okay? If I'm ever in town again, I'll give you an autographed copy."

Azami did not look terribly impressed with this as she shook her head and walked away, but Jiraiya didn't really care. Her chest might not have been great, but it was good enough to give him some ideas for the chapter he'd been struggling with. Poor Jio's encounter with 'Akane' would be one to remember.

Turning his attention back to the matter at hand, he pushed open the door and stepped inside.

"Who the hell is that?!" someone yelled out as he stepped into the back room of the gambling hall. There was a little grumbling from others as well, but they quickly lost interest and turned back to their game. He had come through the door after all and the noise inside the room had apparently been enough to drown out the sound of the guard's head hitting the wall. As far as they were concerned, he was probably just another person about to lose his money.

The room was slightly more brightly lit than the outer area and smelled of better booze, but it was just as smoke filled. There was a small crowd of nicely dress men and women sitting around a small mat on the ground, while others – their entourages or those who had already lost more than they could stand – stood behind them watching the action. At least one of them was probably the owner, a couple in the group standing would be lackeys, and a few of those on the mat would ringers, but the only ones that Jiraiya cared about were the two women in the middle of it all.

They were, if memory served, about the same height. One with shoulder length dark hair and the other with long blond hair pulled back into two ponytails. The blonde was kneeling next to the mat, apparently thinking over her next wager when Jiraiya made his entrance. The Sannin smiled at the sight of her, her enormous chest seemed even bigger than he remembered. Perhaps she'd added a little something to that jutsu she always wore to hide her age.

"Jiriaya-sama!" the dark haired one, Shizune, called out when she spotted him, the pig in her arms wiggled in agitation with all the commotion.

Jiraiya smiled at her, he'd always liked Shizune. One reason for this – though definitely not the most important reason – was that she always seemed to have a realistic sense of just how great he was. She knew what it meant for him to be called a Sannin. After spending a few days with Naruto and his good natured, but irreverent teasing, it was nice to see someone whose respect was clearly reflected in her eyes and voice.

On top of that, she'd stayed with Tsunade all these years. That sort of loyalty was hard to find in this world. They were connected through their love for Shizune's uncle, Dan, and their grief over his death. That had been years ago, however, and a connection like that wasn't the sort of thing that would instill such undying loyalty. Something as strong as Shizune's loyalty had to come from the young woman's heart and Jiraiya was thankful for it.

"What do you want?" Tsunade asked gruffly without looking up at him. Her pretty brown eyes narrowed in a way that suggested she was still thinking hard about the Cho-Han game in front of her. Jiraiya suspected it had more to do with trying to figure out why he'd appeared all of a sudden.

"I have a proposition for you," he said with a smile as he sat next to her, giving Shizune a small nod as a greeting.

"I'm sure this will be interesting," Tsunade sighed and then looked at the bare-chested man in front of her and said, "I pick 'Cho.'"

The dealer lifted the bamboo cup and smiled at the dice underneath. "Sorry, it's 'Han' this time." He pulled the small pile of money off the table and deposited it into a pouch next to him. "Ready to go again?"

"She's done," Jiraiya answered for her.

Tsunade shot him a reproachful glare. It was probably a more annoyed glare than the ones he was receiving from some members of the crowd, but what they lost in intensity, they made up for numerically. "I'll be the one who decides that." Tsunade growled as she turned to the dealer and said, "Roll them again."

Jiraiya watched her play and lose again and sighed. "You're the same as ever."

"Hurry up and tell me your proposition so you can leave," Tsunade sighed. "You're bad luck."

"Tsunade-sama, maybe we should call it a night," Shizune said softly. "There was a nice restaurant just down the street. You can listen to Jiraiya-sama's proposal there… and come back in the morning." The way she said the last part made it sound like she was hoping it wouldn't happen, but had resigned herself to the fact that it would.

Tsunade gave her a sharp look and then sighed. "Fine."

She stood and, ignoring the protests of those who ran the game and of the others who were playing and watching, slowly followed as Jiraiya and Shizune made their way out of the gambling hall. Once they were outside, Jiraiya and Shizune talked happily as they walked towards the restaurant. His eyes, however, continuously strayed back towards Tsunade, who studiously avoided looking at either of them.

She definitely wasn't happy to be away from her game, but at least she was following, that was already better than he'd expected.

As they sat and picked at their food, Jiraiya wasted no time in dropping his bombshell. "I want you to come back to Konoha."

Tsunade stared at him incredulously for a moment and then laughed in his face. "Why would I do that?"

Jiraiya had thought long and hard during his journey about what he would say when he needed to give her a reason to come back. After the death of her little brother, Nawaki, and Dan, something inside of her had broken and her love for the village had been buried under the mountain of grief she carried in that enormous chest of hers. "There's someone I want you to meet," he told her.

He wasn't sure why he thought that Naruto could be the one to get through to her, but there was just something about the boy that made Jiraiya think he could accomplish nearly anything he set his mind to. Probably the only thing Jiraiya didn't really think Naruto was right about was his ability to bring her back on his own. If he could get her to just meet with Naruto, however, he was sure that she could be convinced as he had been.

"Who's that?"

Jiraiya turned so that he could watch her face carefully and then said, "Minato's son."

Her reaction didn't disappoint. She'd always been fond of Minato and the young woman he'd fallen in love with. She hadn't been there when the Kyuubi attacked, so she had never seen Naruto before, but she knew of his existence and the burden he carried.

Tsunade's eyes widened slightly and a bit of color drained from her face. She was silent for a moment, her eyes shifting so that she didn't have to meet his gaze and her tongue gliding over lips that had suddenly gone a little dry. "What makes you think I care about meeting him?"

Jiraiya grinned, she was being difficult. He'd tried to plan this conversation out, but he'd been so sure she'd never even sit down to talk with him that it had been hard to take the planning seriously. He'd already tried playing on some of her fond memories from the past, perhaps it was time to appeal to a less wholesome side of her. "He's in the Chuunin Finals. They start tomorrow."

"So?"

"He's a sure bet to win. A _sure_ bet. Might be worth checking out, right?"

Tsunade wasn't impressed. "I can gamble here."

"But you'll just lose more money here."

She sighed, still not meeting his eyes. "It isn't about the money."

Jiraiya nodded. "I know, but I'd still like you to meet him and if you made a little side bet in the process, what could it hurt?"

"It… it might be nice to see Konoha again," Shizune said softly, earning herself a thankful smile from Jiraiya. "It's been years since we were last there."

"Go, if you want," Tsunade snapped with a scowl, "but I'll never set foot in that village again." She stood up and started towards the door.

"He mastered Rasengan," Jiraiya said quickly, he was growing a little desperate now. He'd known from the start that this was a waste of time, but he had to try. "Not just what I can do, but the whole thing."

Tsunade stopped, intrigued in spite of herself. "That's impossible. Even the Fourth couldn't do that and you…"

"I didn't teach it to him," Jiraiya cut her off. "He knew it before I even met him."

"A trick then," she said, sitting back down, she'd always been a bit of a sucker for a mystery. It was probably one of the things that made her such a great medic-nin. She just wanted to know the answer to all the questions she came across… or used to, anyway.

"Only you and the Fourth could use it," she went on. Jiraiya shook his head and Tsunade frowned thoughtfully. "Then how…" She stopped and put her hands against her ears as she closed her eyes. "Never mind, I _don't_ care. If he's Minato and Kushina's son then I hope you do a better job with him than you did with his father—"

"Tsunade-sama!" Shizune yelled in horror.

"—but I don't care. I don't see any reason why I would need to meet him."

Jiraiya was quiet for a long moment, staring intently at his former teammate. "Shizune, sorry, but would you mind heading back to your room?" he said at last. "I need to talk with Tsunade alone."

The young woman looked confused and glance at Tsunade. After receiving a small nod of permission, she pushed away from the table, bowed politely to Jiraiya, and then walked away without looking back.

Once she'd left the building, Jiraiya sighed and said, "You're just as beautiful and cold as I remembered."

"If you're trying to win me over with flattery, you're doing a pretty bad job of it."

"I stopped trying to win you over years ago. I only flatter girls half your age," Jiraiya informed her with a smile. Then he leaned back in his seat and sighed. "I told him you wouldn't do it."

Tsunade took a sip from her cup of sake. "What are you talking about?" She seemed to almost be forcing herself to keep up her side of the conversation.

"Naruto. He thought that I could convince you to come back to the village. Said you _loved_ me and that I was the only one who could convince you to come back."

"Sounds like you've been sharing your delusional stories with him," Tsunade said with a roll of her eyes. "He's, what, twelve? A little young to be hearing that smut you write, isn't he?"

Jiraiya shrugged. "I didn't introduce him to them. He already had these ideas when I met him."

"Who's his jounin?"

"Kakashi."

The blonde let out a low whistle. "The Third has a wicked sense of humor, doesn't he?"

Jiraiya nodded and took a sip of his own sake. For a long time, the two of them sat in silence. It wasn't really uncomfortable for either of them, they were long past the point of needing to continuously talk to each other, but they were both aware of the fact that it was strange. It had been a long time since they'd seen each other, after all. Even with him asking her to do something they both knew she didn't want to do, there should have been enough stories to tell and memories to recount to fill their time together, yet neither seemed to want to say anything to the other.

Finally Jiraiya threw back his head and poured the last of his sake down his throat. "I've always been a bit of a failure, haven't I?" he asked with a sigh. "Orochimaru was always better than me; you never agreed to go on a date with me… even my books didn't sell until I started sexing them up. Millions of failures spread throughout a lifetime, really."

"You weren't that bad," Tsunade said softly.

Jiraiya scratched the back of his head and chuckled. "It's okay. I got used to it a long time ago. Some people get by with talent; others, like me, just have to persevere through hard work and determination."

Tsunade smiled fondly down at the table. "Yes, that is just like you."

Jiraiya leaned forward and waited until she met his eyes. "I told that brat that I'd bring you back," he said with a snort and a derisive laugh, "and he _really_ thought I could do it. He put a lot of faith in me… pretty dumb, huh? I guess he didn't know who he was dealing with."

Tsunade's face began to fall as confusion set in. She tried to look away, a little ashamed at the words coming out of her old teammate's mouth. Jiraiya was one that she didn't think should ever talk like that… not about Minato's son, not about anyone. It was beneath him.

Jiraiya's hand shot forward and caught her by the chin, forcing her to look at him once more. "I will bring you back," he said firmly, the look in his eyes leaving no question as to the seriousness of his words. "That brat annoys me and is kind of a cocky idiot, but he's also the only person in this whole world besides you that I won't let myself disappoint. I don't care what it takes; I'll follow you to the ends of the Earth to bring you back."

Tsunade pulled away and glared at him. "Why is this so damn important to you?" she demanded.

"When you meet him, you'll understand."

"I told you, I don't want to meet him. That village can go to hell for all I care. I'm done."

Jiraiya flashed her a predatory smile. "Then start running, princess. The next town, some distant city, it doesn't matter. Wherever you go, I'll be right behind you. Naruto said that this existence you're living is beneath you and he's right. I've let you do this to yourself for too long. You're hurting and I get that, we've all been there, but I won't let you deal with it alone anymore. He was stupid to think that you loved me, but you _are_ my friend. I won't abandon you again. That's not the way I do things."

Tsunade stared at him for a long time without saying anything, a strange expression in her eyes. Then she blinked and looked away. "You always were prone to saying stupid things like that…" she sighed, "but you never backed down from them either. I suppose the only way to get rid of you is to kill you or go back to the village, right?"

Jiraiya nodded.

"What if I decide to kill you?"

The white-haired shinobi shrugged. "I'll come back and haunt every slot machine you ever visit for the rest of your life. I'll make sure you never enjoy pulling another lever or throwing away another small fortune ever again."

She considered this for a moment, a small smile on her face, and then said, "A sure thing, you say?"

Jiraiya grinned like a little boy. "If we make it back in time, you'll get to see him mop the floor with everyone he faces. He'll probably make Minato's first Chuunin Exam look exciting by comparison."

Tsunade sighed resignedly. "Shizune has been wanting to see the village again anyway… just don't think that this means that I'm coming back for good. I'll go, I'll meet this Naruto kid, and then I'm out of there…"

"Fair enough."

"…on one condition."

Jiraiya frowned. "What's that?"

Now it was Tsunade's expression that became predatory. "You're going to pay off my debts in this town." She lifted a sheet of paper and waved it in front of his face.

Jiraiya looked at the bottom line and paled. "That brat owes me _big_."

ooo

Less than an hour later, the balance in Jiraiya's bank account was considerably lower and Tsunade, Shizune, and Tonton – Tsunade's pet pig – were packed and ready to go. Tsunade had laughed wickedly as Jiraiya wrote the check to pay her bills and he was still smarting a bit from the sudden loss of money.

All thoughts of money and manipulative women fled from his mind, however, when a dark shape stepped out of the bushes on the side of the road shortly after they left the town.

"Hmm, a pity," the tall man said as he regarded them carefully. "I'd hoped to take care of her before the two of you met up." He sighed and advanced on them. "No matter, it should only cause a small inconvenience…."

ooo

Naruto stared out over the darkened village silently as he sat on his little balcony. He'd tried to sleep, but had only managed a few fitful hours before finally giving it up. He was certain that he'd been nervous before his first – and only – Chuunin Exam finals, but this was sure to be much worse than what he'd felt at the time.

He had to save at least one person from madness, hopefully pull another out of misguided rage, and possibly protect the leader of the village from one of the most evil men in history. No matter how much false importance he'd placed on doing well when he was a kid, he was far more nervous now.

"Where the hell are you, Ero-sennin?" he asked the dark sky.

Over three weeks and not a word from Jiraiya. Was it possible that he'd been playing with Naruto all along? Had he just said that he was going to go find her and then blown it off?

Naruto couldn't bring himself to believe that Jiraiya would do something like that, but one of the other alternatives was even worse. What if Jiraiya had gone to find her and gotten into trouble he couldn't get out of?

Naruto let out a slow breath and raked his hand through his hair. Once upon a time, he'd though that the Toad Sennin was invincible. Three weeks without word wouldn't have been a big deal; he would have just assumed that the old man was off spying on naked women somewhere. He knew better now and it made this sort of thing a little scary.

Jiraiya's continued absence left Naruto fervently hoping that Orochimaru would stay away from the village for a while longer. Keeping Orochimaru from killing the Third wouldn't be too much of a problem now that the village was more prepared for such an attack, but there was a pretty good chance that the snake would be able to escape and then they'd never know when he might strike. Jiraiya and Tsunade's presence would greatly increase the odds of Orochimaru being killed or captured.

Of course, if Orochimaru didn't show up, Naruto would probably have some explaining to do.

He formed about a dozen shadow clones and sent them out on their typical espionage missions. It was an old habit now. Four would go off and follow Sasuke, Rin, Kabuto, and Gaara around – at least until they reached the arena – while the others divided themselves among the Sand and Sound ninja parties and kept tabs on their leaders. Several ANBU teams had already been assigned to similar missions, but Naruto didn't want to take any chances with those who were _supposed_ to be the big players in the coming invasion… or who had been suspected of being a traitor in the future. As far as he was concerned, if Suna or Oto tried anything, it was his responsibility to deal with it.

Any treachery by other villages would be up to Sarutobi to detect and handle, that was his job as Hokage after all. Naruto would help should this timeline be different in that way, but he simply didn't have enough energy to keep track of everyone who wasn't a citizen of Konoha.

Not if he had to be ready to meet up with Orochimaru at anytime.

With his spies moving towards their targets, ready for another couple of hours of watching them do absolutely nothing suspicious, Naruto slung his jacket over his shoulder and headed out the door. He was jittery with nervous energy and hoped that a walk might do him some good.

The village was quiet at this early hour. The street lamps were all lit, but the bugs seemed to be growing weary of dancing around them. The air was still and warm, almost as if the village was holding its breath in anticipation of what was going to happen later in the day. The faint scent of baking breads hung over the streets, making his empty stomach grumble in annoyance.

Naruto stuffed his hand in his pocket and let his head fall back so he could stare up at the dimming stars in the dark blue sky. He tried not to think about what might be coming, but it was hard to focus on anything else.

He'd died the last time he'd faced Orochimaru – or he _thought_ he had anyway – and he was in a younger, weaker body now. A month of training hadn't done much to fix that. Of course, Orochimaru wouldn't be in Sasuke's body and wouldn't have the Sharingan, so two very important advantages of his in the future would be removed. His jutsu repertoire would be smaller as well, but not by enough to make any real difference.

As long Sarutobi and Kakashi were with him, Naruto was confident they could win or at least _not lose_. If they weren't…

Naruto wished once more that Jiraiya had made it back already.

His feet, apparently feeling a bit nostalgic, took him to the Academy first and from there led him towards the training grounds where he and his friends had become Team Seven twice now. He half-expected Kakashi to be in front of the blue-green cenotaph, but the jounin either hadn't made it there yet or was already gone.

Naruto wandered over to the marker and found where his father's name had been etched into the stone.

"We've never really met," he whispered as his fingers traced the characters, "but I wish you were here. It might have been nice to have ended up in a timeline where you survived somehow…"

He sighed and shook his head. Such thoughts were stupid and pointless. He'd never met Namikaze Minato and he never would, wishing for such a thing was a waste of time. His father had given him what he could in their brief time together: a burden that carried with it nearly limitless power. It wasn't much, but it would have to be enough.

Maybe someday they'd meet in the great beyond. Until then, there was no reason to wonder about what might have been or wish for what couldn't be… not even on a day where so much could go so wrong so easily.

He turned and marched resolutely away, heading towards the area where he was going to try to change history.

Along the way, he passed the Ichiraku Ramen Bar. Somewhat surprisingly, it was lit up and movement could be heard in the back room. Naruto stopped and ducked inside just as the owner, Teuchi, carried a large load of pots out of the back and began setting them on the stove.

"Hey, Teuchi-san, are you going to watch me kick ass in the Chuunin Exam today?" Naruto asked when the gray haired man spotted him and turned away from his work.

The ramen cook smiled apologetically, apparently not even surprised at – or perhaps aware of – the early hour that Naruto was wandering the village, and shook his head. "Sorry Naruto, but I've got to work. Business might not be great during the Exam, but I can't afford to ignore what customers I get."

The blond nodded and looked around for a moment, noting a couple of spots on the wall that had been shabbily repaired. He'd never thought about it before, but there probably wasn't a lot of money to be made in a little shop like this. No doubt it was enough to get by on, but unexpected repair costs probably had to be slowly built up and no opportunities to serve customers could be ignored. If Teuchi was rolling in the big bucks, he could probably have afforded to take a couple of days off and not have his daughter always working with him.

Teuchi had always been nice to him, even before he could afford to blow a good chunk of his money on ramen. An idea instantly popped into Naruto's head and he stepped a little closer. "Mind if I tell you a secret?"

Teuchi shrugged and began filling one of the pots with water. "What?"

"I'm going to win the whole thing."

"Ah, really?" Teuchi asked in the voice adults reserved for humoring little children making impossible boasts. "Well, good luck."

"You don't believe me?" Naruto asked with an exaggerated pout.

"The Chuunin Exam is pretty tough and you're still young," the older man said with a small sigh as he wiped the back of his hand across his brow. "I'm sure you'll do well, but… winning the whole thing would be very hard. I hear that there are two geniuses from Konoha and those three from Suna almost broke the speed record for the second test without even getting a scratch on them. That's some steep competition."

"What do you think my odds are?"

"A hundred to one, last I checked."

Naruto's eyes widened slightly. A hundred to one? That was more than a little bit insulting! He'd felt a bit bad about what he was going to do since someone stood to lose a lot of money if Teuchi went for it, but now it felt like they were just getting what they deserved! Even if no one knew he was from the future, they should have at least taken into account the fact that Hatake Kakashi was his sensei. That had to be worth something. Plus, he'd beaten Chouji in the preliminaries without even throwing a punch!

"I tell you what," Naruto said with a sly grin, "put a thousand ryou on me and if I don't win, I'll pay you back."

Teuchi looked up sharply. "A _thousand_?! That's a lot of money, Naruto. I don't think I could…"

"Like I said, I'll pay you back if I don't win, but when I turn your thousand ryou into a hundred thousand, I expect you to give me free ramen for life… or at least for a couple of years."

"You're certainly sure of yourself."

A slightly cocky smile slipped across Naruto's lips. "I'd tell you to put _ten_ thousand on me, but I don't think you'd actually do it. I'm _going_ to win."

Teuchi regarded him for a moment, a thoughtful frown on his face. "Alright, tell you what, I'll make the bet and if you win I'll give you free ramen for three years." He smiled and added, "I'd say for life, but even if I put down a hundred thousand ryou on you, I'd still be losing money in the long run."

Naruto's grin turned very genuine as he said, "It's your own fault, making this stuff so well. If you weren't this competent, I'd have to find somewhere else to eat."

The older man chuckled. "Well, thank goodness we'll never have to worry about that. I'd hate to lose my best customer!"

After saying his goodbyes and being wished good luck by the old man, Naruto set his sights on the arena and made his way there.

ooo

The great circular building of the arena was guarded by chuunin at each of its four entrances. No participant or viewer would be allowed to set up some sort of trap prior to the matches to swing the advantage over to them.

As Naruto reached one of the entrances, the two ninja on either side of the double door opened them and let him inside. Just before he passed through, however, one leaned over and whispered, "You'll be watched at all times. Any attempt at cheating will result in far worse consequences than just your immediate disqualification."

Naruto didn't bother to reply to what was surely not an idle threat. He had no reason to cheat and no need to inform anyone of it. His mind was elsewhere anyway.

Once inside, he slowly made his way up into the stands and sat on one of the wooden benches, staring down at that arena grounds where his friends would be fighting to prove their worth to the daimyo and other dignitaries watching them. That would only be of secondary concern, however, once the really fighting broke out… _if_ it broke out.

The blond sighed and closed his eyes, willing his body to remain perfectly still. There were three people in his immediate vicinity, one behind and off to his right, another on the ceiling almost directly above him, a third hidden somewhere in the seats to his left and…

Naruto looked up sharply as the Third Hokage sat down next to him. The old man was still pretty good, the blond had to admit. He hadn't even sensed him until the last second.

"I thought I might find you here," the Third said softly as he folded his hands in his lap and looked out over the future battleground. "Couldn't sleep?"

Naruto shrugged. "I'm feeling a little nervous," he admitted. "A lot of big things are going to happen today."

"Possibly."

"You still don't believe me?"

"I don't _not_ believe you," Sarutobi said with a chuckle, "but I accept the fact that what you claim hasn't happened yet and still might not."

Naruto took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds and then let it out through his nose. "I guess you're right."

"The future is always in motion, Naruto, even if you think you've already seen it."

Naruto thought about this for a moment and then pushed it aside. He'd had the same thoughts – more or less – and was somewhat sure that he was not even in his own past, but he didn't want to think about it anymore. He had to be ready for some sort of attack today; that was what mattered. If it didn't happen, it didn't happen, but he would be ready in case it did.

"Have you heard from Ero-sennin yet?" he asked looking to change the subject from his own uncertainty.

The Third smiled at the nickname, but then his face fell slightly as he said, "No."

Naruto glanced over his shoulder at one of the shadows that hid an ANBU member. "Doesn't that worry you a little?"

"It worries me a lot, but that is nothing new. Being the leader of a village means that I worry about its citizens all the time."

Naruto thought back to his own disastrous stint as _temporary_ Hokage and nodded. "Yeah, it's not as fun of a job as I thought it would be."

"No, but it is very rewarding and very important. When you're properly prepared for the responsibility, you can handle the worries that come with it a little more easily. If you still want it, when you're old enough and have proven yourself, we'll make sure that you are adequately prepared for the weight you'll be lifting."

Naruto's head snapped around, his eyes wide. For a long moment he just stared at the old man and then a small smile crept across his face. "What if I turn out to be a liar about today?"

The Third smiled at him and stood up, patting the younger man on the shoulder. "The future is always in motion, Naruto," he said again. "We'll deal with whatever happens once it has happened and not before."

And then he was gone and Naruto was left to stew in silence, with only the three ANBU watching his every movement to keep him company.

ooo

The morning progressed slowly for Naruto, whose energy only seemed to increase as the sky grew lighter and the sounds of life began to grow in the village, but eventually people began to show up and he headed down to the waiting area that was set aside for those participating in the Exam. Sakura was the first to arrive, her face pale and her hair looking slightly more disheveled than usual. Her nervousness was apparent and Naruto spent much of his morning trying, with only minimal success, to encourage her.

Fretting over Sakura ended up being such a good distraction, that Naruto completely missed the arrivals of Gaara and his siblings as well as that of Lee and Neji. Gaara glared daggers at him, but didn't say or do anything. Apparently he was content to wait for their potential meeting during the Exam. Kabuto appeared at nearly the same time as Ino, who claimed that she was there to wish Sakura good luck before she found herself a seat in the stands. With Ino there to take over dealing with Sakura's insecurities, Naruto was actually paying attention when Hinata arrived, greeting her with a happy smile and receiving a half-hearted one in return. Finally Sasuke, running uncharacteristically late, appeared and the competitors were all assembled.

Naruto tried to walk among his friends and strike up conversations or at least offer some words of encouragement, but most seemed to be too nervous to pay much attention to him. Those who weren't nervous were almost invariably the ones he really didn't _want_ to talk to: Neji, Kabuto, and the Sand trio. Lee and Sasuke, at least, were pretty confident, though the former was practically bouncing off the walls with pent up energy and the latter was so focused on what was coming that he wasn't much fun to talk to.

Eventually, Naruto made his way over to Hinata who was standing as far away from the group as she could without actually leaving the room.

"How are you feeling, Hinata-chan," he asked with a small smile.

"I-I am… fine, Naruto-kun," she replied softly, not meeting his eyes.

"Not too nervous?"

"A-a little," she admitted.

"You'll do fine; you've gotten a lot stronger."

"Th-thank you."

Throughout the whole conversation she had kept her eyes carefully away from his. Not looking down as she might once have done, but also not looking at him the way she had before he'd learned of her little crush on him. They were still friends, but there was a little rift between them and Naruto wasn't sure how to bridge it. He'd never really had to deal with a Hinata who was uncomfortable around him to the point where he sometimes got the feeling that she wished she was somewhere else whenever they spoke.

Having given it considerable thought during the past few weeks, he was certain he could now see several times where she'd done or said something that he assumed was just her being herself, but might actually have been a clue about her feelings. Unfortunately, he had no way of knowing for sure that that's what any of them were, and they hadn't, technically, happened yet, so he couldn't really ask either. It was annoying to find himself suddenly second guessing what his friend's every word, or voice inflection, or seemingly insignificant action might mean. It was more annoying to have Hinata suddenly acting like she was trying not to do anything that could be seen as her acting out her crush on him.

During the month he'd tried on no less than four occasions to tell her that he just wanted them to go back to the way things were before, but the words never sounded right in his head and he didn't want to bring the subject back up. Now was hardly the time to discuss it, but he couldn't really think of anything else to say.

Somebody coughed behind them, delivering Naruto and Hinata from the awkward situation. The assembled genin all turned to see Hayate, still looking a little sick though not as bad as he was during the preliminaries, standing next to a staircase leading down.

"Hello everyone," he said with a small sniffle. "Um… could you follow me down here so we can introduce you to the crowd?"

Ino wished Sakura good luck and went off to find her seat while the group of genin headed down in a single file line out onto the arena floor. The sun was shining brightly now, with only a hint of cloud cover, and the stands that had been so empty when Naruto arrived that morning were already filled to capacity. At the highest point of the building, Sarutobi was just sitting down next to someone dressed as the Kazekage of Sunagakure. Whether that person really _was_ the Kazekage was another matter.

As tempting as it was for Naruto to assume his knowledge of the future was accurate in this case, he'd been wrong far too often to give into the thought. He would have to wait for Orochimaru to make the first move this time and hope for the best.

"Thank you all for coming to Konohagakure's Chuunin Selection Exam!" Sarutobi called out in a loud voice. "We will now start the tournament matches between the eleven participants who made it through the preliminaries. Please stay and watch until the end!"

There was some mild applause from the stands and then Hayate turned to the genin and said, "Okay, this is the final test. The rules are the same as when you fought in the preliminaries, there really aren't any. You fight until you quit or die or until I decide that the match is over, got it?"

No one needed to be reminded of this. They were only too aware of the rules.

Hayate coughed again and then said, "You two in the first fight, Kankuro and Uzumaki Naruto, can stay. Everyone else head back to the waiting room."

As the genin walked back towards the waiting room, Hinata paused in front of Naruto and whispered, "Good luck, Naruto-kun."

He grinned at her and said, "I'll see you in a couple of minutes."

ooo

Hinata leaned on the railing of the opening that allowed those in the waiting area to watch the matches when they weren't participating. Down below, Naruto was rather lazily stretching his neck and saying something to Kankuro that probably wasn't very polite if his cocky smile was anything to go by. She wished that he wouldn't act like he was taking this match so lightly. Kankuro was probably a pretty tough opponent, certainly all the other genin from Suna had been.

"Naruto's feeling pretty confident, huh?" Sakura whispered as she stepped next to Hinata and smiled as she looked down at her teammate.

Hinata nodded slowly, feeling a bit shy. "H-he has improved a lot. He… he has good reason to f-feel proud of himself."

"Improved is an understatement," Sakura chuckled. "He's like a whole other person compared to who he was in the Academy." She watched as the two competitors began circling each other, looking like she was trying not to appear worried at the way Naruto almost seemed to be skipping. "I've been meaning to apologize," she said after a moment. "I kind of feel like I messed things up for you."

Hinata blushed bright red and looked down. "It… it w-was not your fault. I… I should have known better…"

Sakura turned away from the action below and frowned at Hinata. "What's that supposed to me?"

"It was just a… childish fantasy… I knew how N-Naruto-kun really felt about me."

"Don't you dare think that, Hinata!" Sakura hissed. "It's not your fault Naruto's dumb and can't see how great you are." Then she grinned and leaned in a little closer. "I'll help you get him, if you want."

Hinata's eyes widened and she quickly went back to looking down at the match below. The arm of Kankuro's puppet shot out and nearly caught Naruto, but the blond skipped away easily and peppered it with kunai. He was apparently having such a good time that he was willing to give in to the urge to laugh despite the danger he was in.

Sakura didn't see any of that, and probably didn't really care. She seemed far more interested in Hinata's love life, for some reason.

"I had a… _friend_… who once told me that if I wanted the guy I liked to return those feelings, I should try being his friend first and help him reach his goal in life." She let her eyes drift past Hinata to where Sasuke was standing at the far edge of the opening and sighed. "He might not ever really feel the same way about me, but I don't think I care about that quite as much anymore… I just want to help him."

Hinata looked up at the pink haired kunoichi and said, "I… I don't understand."

Sakura shrugged. "Naruto used to always go on about how he wanted to be Hokage, right?" Hinata nodded. "So help him get there. I don't know if he'll ever get his head out of his ass and see what he's missing out on, but if you really love him, you'll just want to see him happy."

Hinata's face felt as warm as a sheet of metal that had been baking in the summer sun all day and it was taking all of her will power not to pick at her nails, or pinch her lip, or do any of the things she normally did when she was nervous and uncomfortable. The Hyuuga clan had always placed privacy – particularly when it came to personal feelings – as a high priority. She wasn't used to talking about such things so openly, and she didn't like it. It was awkward and she knew that her embarrassment was obvious for all the world to see. Her feelings for Naruto should have been something that she could just hide deep within her heart – or at least as deep as she could bury it. Instead, they were apparently so blatant that they were served up as idle conversation subjects.

"I-I don't know how I could help him with… with something like that," she whispered, praying that the conversation would end soon. "He… he can reach his dream even w-without my help."

Sakura smiled in understanding. "That's not the point. The point is that you're his friend and you want to help him." She glanced down at where Naruto was now systematically rendering the puppet immobile by jamming kunai into each of its joints every time it attacked him. "Besides, you're going to be the leader of the Hyuuga clan someday, right? Even if he could do it on his own, I bet having your support would give him a big boost."

Hinata paused at that. She'd never really thought of what she could do for Naruto in that way. Of course, she wasn't exactly her clan's ideal choice, not by a long shot, but she was next in line. Her little sister had not been given the curse seal yet since it wasn't time for one or the other of them to take over for their father, and Hinata had sort of assumed that tradition would be ignored and the stronger of the sisters would be chosen when that time arrived.

Even if her father and the clan council were willing to ignore tradition in favor of the stronger sister, it might not mean that Hanabi would be the one chosen, Hinata suddenly realized. Their sparring matches during the last month had become much closer contests. It was growing harder to tell if Hinata was losing because she was weaker, because she had less energy after training all day, or because deep down she just didn't want to beat her sister.

Some part of her had always expected to be the one that ended up becoming a Branch family member. She'd never really wanted to lead the clan in the first place, but now…

Kankuro's puppet was no longer moving. There was a kunai in nearly every single joint. Naruto moved in with a calm confidence that he seemed to have developed ever since they graduated. Suddenly the head of the puppet opened up and a large spike extended from the spot where its mouth had been. Naruto didn't even seem surprised by the deadly secret compartment. He easily dodged the hasty attempt to stab him, and then drove his fist into the chest area of the puppet.

Kankuro's strange weapon exploded in a shower of wood and metal and Naruto stepped forward to engage the Sand-nin in hand-to-hand combat. Kankuro was clearly not as good at taijutsu as Naruto, lacking both the speed and the power of the younger genin. In only a few minutes he was lying at the blond's feet, out cold.

"Winner: Uzumaki Naruto!"

There was silence for a moment and then the crowd in the stands above them began to clap and a few even broke into fairly exuberant cheers. Naruto tilted his head back and closed his eyes, enjoying the moment, and then looked up at the opening where Hinata and Sakura were standing and smiled.

For him, Hinata thought, she could do it. She might not be able to become the perfect leader her clan wanted, but she could be the strong leader that it needed. She could do it for Naruto…

And for her family.

ooo

Sakura glanced at Hinata out of the corner of her eye and smiled at the expression on the young woman's face. She wasn't sure if her advice – or the apology that it had started out as – was all that good in Hinata's situation, but the small smile on the Hyuuga's face was surely a sign that something had clicked. Hopefully Naruto wouldn't be so dense as to miss out on it a second time around.

If nothing else, perhaps her advice would help the two of them get back to acting a little more natural around each other. Their awkwardness was painful to watch, especially since it sent a little jab of guilt into Sakura's heart every time she saw it.

It was, after all, her fault for sticking her nose where it didn't belong.

When Naruto arrived at the top of the stairs, Sakura and Hinata were the first two to greet him and offer their congratulations. Hinata was still as soft spoken as ever, but some of the hesitancy had gone out of her voice and movements and Naruto seemed relieved to see it.

The next match, which would be between Shikamaru and Temari, was announced and the Sand kunoichi made a big show of riding her enormous fan down to the arena floor. Shikamaru took one look at the display and began to grumble about his luck. It almost seemed like he was simply going to talk himself out of competing when Naruto calmly walked over to him and gave him a firm push that sent him over the edge of the railing.

Sakura tried to watch the match once it started, but couldn't seem to focus on it. For one thing, it was mostly just Shikamaru taking cover in the wooded areas around the edge of the arena floor while Temari used her wind attacks to keep her distance. For another, when the match was over, she and Sasuke would be the ones down there fighting.

No matter how much she tried to listen to the encouragement of Naruto and Ino, Sakura just couldn't get excited about the prospect of fighting Sasuke. He would beat her with ease, she was sure of it, and would look down on her for her weakness. It would be humiliating to go out there and get completely outclassed in front of all these people.

If, however, some sort of a miracle happened and she actually beat Sasuke… how would he take it? They hadn't competed in many things during the time that they'd known each other, so she had little to base her theory on besides what she knew of his personality, but she couldn't see him appreciating her winning. He'd barely been able to stand it when she proved better than him during their tree climbing training, how much worse would he react if she somehow beat him in front of all these people?

She was momentarily distracted by Shikamaru throwing a kunai into the air with his shirt attached to it in an effort to extend the reach of his shadow so he could capture Temari. It was his second or third such attempt to lure her into a position where he could catch her with his Kagemane no Jutsu, but Temari always seemed to sniff out his traps before they were fully sprung.

Obviously the Suna kunoichi was a pretty quick thinker. Shikamaru was starting to seem a bit desperate. Sakura prayed that he'd be able to delay the end result by another few minutes, or hours, or even days. At least until all those watching started to go home.

The pink-haired kunoichi leaned out over the railing and tried to look up into the stands. Her parents were up there, somewhere. So were Kakashi and Rin and probably Anko and Yugao. What would they say if Sasuke made her look bad?

She could easily imagine what Anko would say: _"Pretty little princess couldn't do shit when it all came down to it. What a waste of my time. Don't tell anyone I tried to train you, alright? I'd hate to have my name attached to a performance like that!"_

Sakura smiled in spite of herself. Anko would probably say about the same thing even if she won.

Rin and Yugao would be nicer about it, of course, but they'd be equally disappointed. Rin had been a wonderful teacher during the past few weeks. Sakura had been studying medical ninjutsu for a while and thought she had a pretty good grasp on a lot of it, but Rin had made all that knowledge look like nothing. She'd been out there, doing it for real. Any time Sakura tried to do a jutsu she'd learned in a book, chances were Rin had a better and faster way of doing it. She was almost exactly the sort of kunoichi Sakura had pictured Kakashi would get to train her originally.

Rin was now everything that Sakura dreamed of being when she got older. She was smart and beautiful and strong and funny and just… wonderful. She was like the big sister Sakura had always wanted.

While they'd worked on the different medical ninjutsu and a couple of new genjutsu, they'd talked about all sorts of things: clothes that were fun to wear when they weren't on active duty, clothes that were fun to wear when they _were_ on active duty, all sorts of things dealing with Sasuke, what Kakashi was like when he was little, training methods for getting stronger in the areas where Sakura's natural talents lay, how irritating parents could be when they just didn't understand the needs of young kunoichi… everything!

Rin even told her some stories from the war that she and Kakashi had fought in, though it was obviously a sensitive subject that she didn't like to go into too much. What stories she would tell, however, were very interesting both for the history that they gave insights into and for the enlightenment they provided for what life could be like if another war broke out. Sakura now realized that she had mostly played at being a ninja so far, Rin had been one and it was fascinating to hear about.

"Winner: Temari!" Hayate's voice called out.

Sakura looked up in surprise. It was over already?

"Typical," Sasuke snorted just behind her, causing her to jump a little. She hadn't even felt him approach. "Can't find the energy to be bothered with winning even when he has it practically all wrapped up."

Sakura turned her attention back to the arena floor. Shikamaru was not unconscious, as she'd expected him to be, or dead, something that wouldn't have surprised her, or even all that dirty. He was just standing in front of Temari, his hands in his pockets and a bored expression on his face. "I missed it. What happened?"

"He caught her in the end and then he just gave up," Sasuke sighed, "like he didn't even care about winning."

"How did he catch her?"

Sasuke pointed at the debris from Kankuro's puppet. "He maneuvered her over by that junk and used its shadows to lengthen his own. Got her from behind, she didn't even see it coming."

Hayate coughed and then called out, "And now, the next match. Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura!"

The contents of Sakura's stomach threatened to escape the way they'd come in the night before and her heart dropped into her sandals. She wasn't ready yet!

"I'll see you down there," Sasuke said as he turned and headed for the stairs, nodding to Naruto as he passed him.

Naruto returned Sasuke's nod and then walked to Sakura's side. "Are you okay?" he asked.

Sakura nodded slowly, not willing to risk opening her mouth.

"Sakura-chan, Sasuke and I will still like you no matter what happens down there," Naruto told her. "Just go out and show us what you can do. Don't worry about anything but showing me and Sasuke how good you've gotten, got it?"

His words seemed to settle her stomach slightly, but _only_ slightly, and so she chanced opening her mouth and whispering, "Thanks."

Naruto grinned at her. "I'll be rooting for you. He needs a good ass kicking to keep his head from getting too big." He looked around to see if anyone was listening in and then leaned in closer and whispered, "If you want to help him rebuild his clan, you better get used to it. Sasuke strikes me as the sort who'll like it a little rough. You could just think of this as practicing foreplay!"

Sakura's eyes widened at his words and suddenly her fear and anxiety seemed to slip away as embarrassment and rage filled her veins. "NARUTO!" She growled and took a swing at him. He dodged just enough to keep from being really injured, but the punch still spun him a full 360 degrees around.

She was about to swing again when he started laughing and said, "Now you're ready!"

Suddenly she knew what he was doing. It sort of hurt his plan that she'd realized his intentions, but it didn't take away the weird sweetness of it. He was just getting her riled up so she'd stop worrying about the fight that she was about to participate in.

Her fist relaxed and her breathing returned to normal. "Thanks," she said with a small smile and then headed for the stairs.

"If you keep swinging so hard, I'm not going to be able to keep letting you hit me," he called after her, causing her smile to grow a little larger.

He was definitely the strangest friend she'd ever had, but there were times when she thought he might actually be her _best_ friend.

All too quickly she found herself standing across from Sasuke with Hayate in between them. The sickly ninja glanced at both of them to see if they were ready and then told them to begin.

Sasuke instantly shifted into his taijutsu stance while Sakura made a half-hearted attempt at her own. She didn't really feel as nervous as she had before Naruto's stupid joke, but she also wasn't sure that she could go through with fighting Sasuke for real. The fact of the matter was that she didn't _care_ about making chuunin, not this time anyway. For her, this whole Exam had been a chance to get stronger and to see where she stood with her peers and elders. For Sasuke, this was his life.

Almost everything he did, he did to get stronger. He had a mission in life and he needed to be a strong as possible as soon as possible to complete it. He was going to kill his brother who had slaughtered their clan and that meant he had to grow more and more powerful everyday. She wanted him to get better, but she didn't want to fight him like this. She definitely didn't want to beat him.

Sasuke rushed forward, he was much faster than the last time she'd seen him in a fight, and threw a punch. Sakura brought up her arm and mostly blocked it, though it still clipped her shoulder. She winced and leapt away from him, but he stayed right with her.

On instinct her foot lashed out at his head, but her brain – or heart – cut the power of the attack to almost nothing. Sasuke blocked it with ease and frowned in confusion.

Sakura waited patiently for him to attack again. When he came this time, she'd just take the punch and let that be the end of it.

The loss of the Uchiha clan had hurt the village's psyche and they needed to see a powerful Uchiha to start healing that injury. Sasuke needed to feel confident in his abilities if he was going to reach the power he sought. If she let him win quickly, and his victory was basically inevitable anyway, then he wouldn't be worn down in the slightest when he faced his opponent in the next round. She could probably fight a defensive battle, drag things out looking for a chance to get the upset win, and wear him down a little, but she didn't want him tired. She didn't want to win. She only wanted to help him and the best way she could do that is by letting him knock her out with his next attack.

But Sasuke didn't attack. He stared at her, his face a peculiar mix of emotions, and then straightened up out of his taijutsu stance. With a sad shake of his head, he turned to Hayate and raised his hand. "I forfeit."

o

o

A/N: Sorry this is a little later than I meant for it to be, but it's not _too_ late, right? Anyway, we got a couple of matches out of the way here, though there was really very little action in this chapter. The problem was that the first two matches were the most boring of the whole Chuunin Exam. Kankuro wasn't going to beat Naruto, and Temari v. Shikamaru is canon and wasn't really going to change much (though a more creative writer would have found a different way for him to capture her in his shadow rather than using a remnant from Naruto's fight just like in canon). Hopefully my basically skipping over them wasn't too irritating, but this chapter was already over 10K words without them and I didn't think it really needed to be _longer_.

So, a little cliffhanger, some Jiraiya and Tsunade action, a bit of emotional junk with Hinata and Sakura, and some glazed over action… not too shabby, right?

Hopefully you enjoyed it. There are more fights in the next chapter, of course. Interesting one's too, including, but not limited to Gaara v. maybe good/maybe bad Kabuto and Lee v. Neji. Ugh… maybe the invasion will just start right away next chapter so I don't have to write any of those….

As always, reviews are greatly appreciated. Also, if you have a question that you actually want answered, but don't have an account (it's free, I don't know why you wouldn't have one) remember to leave an email address. I try to respond to most reviews, but will definitely respond if you have an actual question (those asking for info on what will happen later in the story – such as whether or not Rin is evil – will get a vague comment and a "You'll find out in one of these chapters").

See you all next week.

Cho-han bakuchi – This is the game that Tsunade is playing in this chapter. It's a traditional Japanese gambling game where a cup with dice in it is shaken and then put down on the table on the table, players bet on whether the resulting numbers will be even (Cho) or odd (Han). In the series, Naruto inadvertently helps Jiraiya win a game of this while attempting to learn Rasengan (his failed attempt tips the dice to give Jiraiya the win). Apparently the yakuza are rather fond of this game.

Kagemane no Jutsu – "Shadow Imitation Technique" Shikamaru's favorite technique.


	34. Chapter 33

Chapter 33

o

Sakura couldn't breath. It was as if all of the air had been sucked out of the arena, probably by the collective gasp of the spectators above them. Time seemed to have stopped as she and everyone else stared at Sasuke, who was calmly looking over at Hayate, his hand still in the air.

"Are you going to declare the winner?" Sasuke asked with a tiny hint of a laugh in his voice.

Hayate gave himself a little shake, coughed, and then said, "Winner: Har—"

"No!" Sakura yelled, finally pulling air into her lungs. "I won't accept it. Sasuke-kun isn't forfeiting!"

Hayate gave her a funny look and said, "Um, he already did."

"I won't accept it!"

The jounin shrugged, "You don't have to. The decision is out of your hands."

The pink-haired kunoichi shook her head. "No." She turned and looked pleadingly at Sasuke and said, "Why did you do that? Don't you understand…"

Sasuke shook his head. "You don't understand. Even after all this time, you still don't get me. I don't_ care_ about making chuunin. I never did. I just wanted to see how strong you'd gotten. If you can't show me while we fight, I'll wait and see it in your next match."

"But I thought…"

"I told you I'd do this if you didn't fight me seriously," Sasuke reminded her. "Did you think I was lying?" He shook his head, a small smile on his lips, "I don't go back on my word."

The two stared at each other and then someone from the stands yelled out, "You little prick! You cost me a month's wages!"

Sasuke didn't bother turning and looking up at the heckler, nor did he bat an eye when others in the stands joined in. His dark eyes remained on Sakura until she could stand it no more and looked away.

"Winner: Harun—"

"I'll fight you!" Sakura yelled as she looked back up, cutting off Hayate's second attempt at declaring her victory. "I'll do it. I won't hold back or let you win or anything… please, don't forfeit, not like this."

Sasuke shrugged. "I don't think I can _un_forfeit. We'll just have to do it tomorrow at the training grounds. I was going to challenge Naruto anyway; we might as well make it a team affair."

Sakura turned to Hayate and said, "Please, don't count that. He was just joking."

"The rules are that once you give up, you're done," Hayate replied with an apologetic shrug.

"You told us that there are no rules," Sakura pointed out. "You're the referee, aren't you? Just say that the match is starting back up."

Hayate folded his arms and then coughed, his brows knit in a thoughtful expression.

When he didn't immediately dismiss the notion, Sakura added a little more. "Yugao-san would do it if she was the referee."

"Actually, she's a bit of a stickler for protocol," Hayate informed her with a smirk, "but she'd probably hate to see her favorite student so disappointed…" He sighed, and then looked up at the roof where the leaders of Suna and Konoha were sitting. "We'll leave it up to Hokage-sama."

ooo

Sarutobi pursed his lips thoughtfully and brought his fingertips together so he could rest his chin against them. It was an unfortunate dilemma that he was facing. On the one hand, it really wasn't a problem for him to allow the fight to continue since both competitors were willing to accept that decision and the crowd would clearly be in favor of it. The fact was that many of those in the stands had come specifically to see Uchiha Sasuke fight. On the other hand, Naruto had said that Orochimaru was after Sasuke and that the invasion had started when Sasuke and Gaara were fighting. If Sasuke defeated Sakura, then he would face Gaara in the next round.

He could allow the match to continue and _potentially_ allow Orochimaru's scheme to continue as planned, or he could cause a great deal of unhappiness amongst some very important people based on somewhat unreliable evidence.

He shook his head. The daimyo and other dignitaries would get over it. Better to have them mad that he wouldn't change the rules so one of their favorites could continue fighting than to have them see the village invaded. Naruto hadn't known much about the casualty count from the first time around, but Sarutobi knew that it must have been fairly high. It wouldn't be farfetched for half of Konoha's military forces to have been lost in such a conflict.

Next to him, dressed in blue and white robes with the kanji for "wind" on his hat and the traditional headwear masking his entire face except for his eyes, the Kazekage was carefully watching him. If Naruto was right, he would be Orochimaru. Sarutobi had considered insisting on him removing his mask so his face could be plainly seen, but someone like Orochimaru might have expected that and further disguised himself. Even worse, if it wasn't Orochimaru, it would be considered a grave insult to ask such a thing. Konoha's relationship with Suna was strained as it was, it would be foolish to cause farther problems between them based solely on Naruto's remembrance of things that hadn't even happened yet. Besides, Naruto hadn't been right often enough to assume that everything he remembered would come to pass this time around.

Sarutobi pushed the thoughts of who might be sitting next to him away and stood to give his pronouncement of Sasuke's fate.

"Hokage-dono," the Kazekage spoke up before Sarutobi could say anything, "perhaps it would be better to allow the fight to continue."

Sarutobi turned to face him, forcing his eyes to remain neutral as he looked at the man who might be Orochimaru. "Why do you say that?"

"I'm sure you are aware of how many people are here to see your Uchiha fight our Gaara. If you allow his forfeit to stand, they will be very disappointed. I would consider it a personal favor if you restarted the match."

"How unlike you to ask for a favor over such a frivolous thing, Kazekage-dono," Sarutobi said, doing his best to keep his suspicions out of his voice.

The Kazekage shrugged. "He is the famous survivor of _that_ clan, when Gaara defeats him, it will allow everyone here to see the quality of ninja Sunagakure produces. After Kankuro's defeat, and Temari's match… such a showing would be very important to us."

Sarutobi shook his head. He'd made up his mind. In another time he might have allowed the match to go on to help the relationship between Konoha and Suna, but knowing the potential disaster that could occur if he granted the Kazekage's request, there was only one choice. "I apologize, Kazekage-dono, but I cannot grant this. Sasuke has forfeited. The rules will not be altered to accommodate a change of heart. A chuunin cannot flip-flop. He must make a decision and accept the consequences of it." A small smile creped across his lips as he said, "Your Gaara will have plenty of time to shine even without that match."

The Kazekage's eyes did not look pleased, but he did not argue farther as Sarutobi turned and said, "Uchiha Sasuke has forfeited; his decision to do so will not be overturned."

ooo

Naruto shook his head as he heard Sarutobi's announcement. He could guess at the reason for it, but it didn't make him feel any less disappointed that his chance of seeing Sasuke in action had vanished. It had been a long, long time since he'd seen Sasuke fight for real. He, or one of his clones, had caught a few glimpses of Sasuke's fight against the Collectors, but before that it had been… not since the Valley of the End, unless you counted the very brief fight when the new Team Seven had tried to rescue him from Orochimaru.

Neither of those fights were particularly fun to remember anyway.

Still, despite his disappointment, he felt a little pride in the fact that Sasuke had been willing to step away so that Sakura wouldn't simply go out without showing what she could do. He wasn't sure that it was the best way to handle the situation – a little warning might have been nice – but it was far different from the way Sasuke would have done things the first time around, and that was something.

"I wish he would have at least given me a couple more minutes to prepare myself," Kabuto said with a chuckle as he stepped next to Naruto. "I'm not sure that I'm ready for my match yet."

Naruto did his best not to glare at the young man who happened to look exactly like a traitor from Naruto's memories, but might not necessarily be the same person. "You're worried about Gaara?"

"I think I might struggle against him," Kabuto admitted with a weak smile.

"Why's that?" Naruto asked.

"Most of my jutsu are earth elemental," Kabuto explained, "but he has much better control of the earth than I do. If I try something like Shinjuu Zanshu no Jutsu, I get the feeling that I'd be crushed to death before I ever made it out of the ground. It's unfortunate, but I'm really handicapped against him."

"So are you just going to forfeit?" Naruto asked, his eyes studying the young man carefully.

Kabuto frowned, clearly surprised by the question, and then began to chuckle as he said, "I don't think my chances are _that_ bad. He might be strong, but I'm more experienced. Besides, he hurt one of my teammates. I can't just let that go without trying to pay him back."

Naruto wished that Kabuto had just said that he had no intention of fighting Gaara. At least _that_ would have been in line with what the Kabuto from his timeline would have done. As it was, he found himself almost liking this Kabuto. He didn't trust him, but he couldn't deny that he kind of liked him. If Kabuto was telling the truth about his reasons for going through with the match, then it kind of reminded him of himself. He'd had similar feelings numerous times during his original life. Precious people were meant to be protected, but if you couldn't protect them, you paid the person who hurt them back as soon as you were able… if you were able.

"Kabuto-san," he said softly, "Gaara is… he's dangerous. Be careful."

Kabuto smiled and patted Naruto on the shoulder. "Don't worry. Once Misumi got out of the hospital, he helped me scout him out. I don't know everything, of course, but I think I have a pretty good idea of what he's capable of. It'll be fine. If things do get out of hand, I won't be so foolish as to throw my life away in a tournament match. If I don't make chuunin today, I'll just try again next time. I'm nothing if not persistent."

Naruto nodded, not sure what else to say. He wasn't even sure that he should say anything else. If Kabuto was a traitor in this timeline, then it would be better for Gaara to kill him than for him to have the opportunity to stab Konoha in the back.

Kabuto gave him one more smile and then headed down the stairs.

"Is he a friend of yours?" Gaara asked as he passed Naruto on his way to the stairs.

Naruto shrugged. "Not really. You're probably more my friend than he is. At least I know where I stand with you."

Gaara was silent for a moment and then said, "There are only two rounds before we meet. Don't lose before I get the chance to kill you."

"I'm fighting your sister next," Naruto reminded him with a chuckle, "just tell her to go easy on me and we'll meet for sure."

"If you can't beat her, you aren't as interesting as I thought," Gaara replied and then walked down the stairs.

ooo

"What did I miss?" Kakashi asked as he sat in the seat Rin had saved for him.

His former teammate looked up and shook her head. "Practically everything. Naruto won and Sasuke gave up about thirty seconds into his match with Sakura."

Kakashi's one visible eye opened slightly. "Really?"

Rin turned her attention back to the arena grounds, watching as Sasuke and Sakura walked towards the stairs. "He wouldn't want you to keep doing this," she whispered.

"Who?" Kakashi asked casually.

"You know who," Rin growled. "Obito-kun wouldn't like it if he knew you were still acting this way. You don't have to punish yourself for the rest of your life."

Kakashi glanced at her and said, "Some debts can't be paid in just a few years."

Rin sighed and shook her head again. "You're taking it too far."

"It's only to remind me," Kakashi replied. "I'm on time to the important things."

"Like your students' first Chuunin Exam?"

"Two of them are still in it. I didn't miss that much."

Rin couldn't help herself. She tried not to hold the laugh in, but it was just too ridiculous. "You really are starting to become a lot like Obito-kun, aren't you?"

"I'm only adopting his good qualities."

"And your team seems to be picking them up as well. Sasuke forfeited so that Sakura could show how strong she's gotten in the next round. It sounds exactly like the sort of idiotic thing Obito-kun would have done."

Kakashi's mask shifted as he smiled. "They're getting there, I suppose."

ooo

Sasuke turned and started walking away before the Third had even finished his announcement. He'd sort of thought that they might allow him to fight Sakura, but he didn't really care that the match was actually over. He'd told her he would forfeit if she held back, and he'd meant it. Even though she said she would fight him seriously, he'd seen enough in her eyes to know that some part of her would never be fully in the fight. She simply didn't want to beat him.

It was nice of her to care, he supposed, but unnecessary. He didn't mind losing to her. His goal in life had nothing to do with this tournament, outside of having the chance to fight against some strong opponents. From what he'd seen in the first two matches, neither Kankuro nor Temari would offer him much of a contest.

Of all the Suna genin in the tournament, only Gaara still interested him.

There were plenty of other strong people around, however. Lee had defeated him, Neji probably would have – though it was hardly a fair match since he was injured – and Naruto… Naruto was the most interesting of all. He could fight any of them any time he wanted. They would be enough for him to work on until the next Chuunin Exam came around. It was only six months away, after all.

"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura called as she hurried to catch up to him. He'd just reached the stairs when she finally reached him. Kabuto was walking down the stairs with a slightly worried look on his face. She gave him an encouraging smile and waited until he'd past before she turned to Sasuke and whispered. "I'm… I'm sorry. I…" She paused, wet her lips, and then said, "I forgot that you'd said that, but… I shouldn't have tried to let you win no matter what. I thought I was helping you. I just wanted you to have plenty of energy when you fought Gaara or Kabuto in the next round."

Sasuke shrugged. "It's not a big deal," he said calmly, looking up at the stands where people were still yelling in frustration at him. "Not to me, anyway," he amended. "If you don't make chuunin this time around, we'll face each other in the next tournament."

"I'll train with you tomorrow and show you how strong I've gotten," Sakura promised.

Sasuke nodded. "I'll be there."

"Then it's a date," Sakura said with a happy smile until she realized the word that had come out of her mouth. It had been a long time since she'd said "date" in front of Sasuke. He'd obviously appreciated her efforts as that was when they started to become better friends, now she'd gone and ruined it by bringing up those old memories of how annoying she used to be. Sakura's smile vanished as her eyes widened in horror. "I… uh… I mean it's a…"

Sasuke looked down at her and smirked. "It's a date."

Sakura's eyes widened and a large smile spread across her face. She was fairly sure that he was joking and _not_ actually asking her out on a date – and she really didn't want to go on a date that involved her fighting at full strength anyway – but even that much was a welcome change. Sasuke might not return her feelings, but he felt like they were good enough friends that he could make jokes like that. He definitely had never made that sort of joke with any of the other girls who'd pursued him during their time at the Academy.

Her warm feelings quickly evaporated, however, as a shadow fell across them and a fairly large amount of kill intent flooded the area at the base of the stairs.

"Move," Gaara said. He didn't sound annoyed, he didn't sound angry, he was just giving an order that he expected to be obeyed unless someone wanted to die.

Sasuke's smirk remained in place as he looked up at Gaara. "You didn't say 'please.'"

Sakura grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out of Gaara's way. She was sure that Sasuke could handle the red haired genin, but they would get in trouble if a fight broke out and she really didn't need Gaara being angry with her.

There was a good chance that she would be facing him in the next round, after all.

ooo

"I'm glad I didn't have to wait to meet you later," Kabuto told Gaara as they waited for Hayate to give them permission to start their match. "My friend is still recovering from the damage you did to his arms."

Gaara simply stared silently at Kabuto the way a crocodile would stare at a small bird. Kabuto simply didn't matter to him in the slightest. Responding to anything the older genin said would be a waste of breath and energy. In fact, most of the rest of the tournament was a waste of time. Only two things really mattered to him at the moment and neither of them had much to do with Kabuto or the girl, Sakura, that he would face in the next round.

"Begin," Hayate said as he stepped away from them.

Kabuto's hands instantly dipped into the weapon pouch strapped to his lower back and whipped three kunai at the Sand-nin. Gaara's sand shot out of the gourd, blocking the kunai with plenty of time to spare and then swirling after Kabuto who quickly leapt away. The sand didn't give up easily, however, and continued to chase him until he was almost on the other side of the battle area at which point it broke of its pursuit and returned to gourd.

Kabuto smiled. "Apparently there's a range to your abilities after all."

Gaara didn't reply. Instead, his eyes shifted towards the waiting area where Naruto was watching the fight. The ghost of a smile crossed his lips at the intensity he found in those blue eyes.

Kabuto clearly wasn't upset by the fact that Gaara seemed to be completely uninterested in him, but he wasn't going to pass up a moment of distraction by his opponent. He charged at Gaara with far more speed than he'd shown in any of his past Chuunin Exam showings and sent a perfectly executed kick at the Sand-nin's head.

Gaara hadn't even returned his attention to Kabuto before the sand was out of the gourd and in front of his face. Kabuto had a little less than a second to feel the shock of having been blocked so easily before the grains encircled his leg and lifted him off the ground, turning him so that he was forced to face Gaara as the younger genin's eyes finally shifted away from Naruto. Kabuto tried to wrench his leg free, but when he reached up to grab at his ankle, the sand simply tried to catch his wrist as well. With freeing himself clearly not an option, he tried to use his close proximity to his opponent to his advantage, swinging wildly at Gaara's chest.

The sand shifted slightly as if agitated by the potential attack, but Kabuto's hand never got close enough to make contact with Gaara's body. The corner of Gaara's lips turned up as he watched the helpless genin struggle as the sand slowly lifted him higher, preparing to slam him into the ground and end the battle.

Suddenly the strap across Gaara's chest, as well as a small section of his shirt, split and the gourd it was holding up fell to the ground with a loud crash. Despite his normally stoic nature, Gaara spun and looked at the source of the noise, his eyes wide.

Kabuto used the moment of distraction to draw another kunai from his weapon pouch and throw it at Gaara's turned back. A piece of the sand that held him in the air broke away and intercepted the attack. It wasn't much, but it was enough that when he grabbed his knee and jerked down hard he was able to pull free. He was already forming seals as he flipped in the air, landed on his feet, and immediately leapt at the still distracted Gaara.

He pinned the red head's hands at his side with one arm and brought his other hand up to Gaara's throat. "Careful," he whispered as his hand began to glow blue, "sometimes near misses can be just as deadly as attacks that connect. If you don't want to find out what I can do when I actually hit you, you better surrender now."

Gaara didn't say anything for a moment. His eyes were still opened wider than normal, but the shock had receded from his face. In fact, he looked rather happy all of a sudden. Slowly he turned his head away from the gourd at his feet and looked at Kabuto. "You'll make a tasty meal for her, I think," he told the Leaf genin.

Kabuto didn't ask what Gaara meant. He'd given the boy a chance to surrender; no one would fault him for ending the match after being threatened. He dragged his finger tips across Gaara's throat, a thin cut trailing just behind them as the skin opened up under his touch.

And out of the cut poured… sand.

Kabuto sucked in a breath as he realized the danger he was in, and then a blast of sand slammed into his chest, sending him flying across the battle ground.

Gaara turned with deliberate slowness to watch as the older ninja pulled himself to his feet. Kabuto brought his hand up to his mouth and coughed into it. When he pulled his hand away, there was a small trickle of blood running between his fingers. He shook his hand to clean it and then spit a little more blood from his mouth and brought his arms up as he prepared to defend himself as best he could.

"Who would have guessed that you'd have covered yourself in sand as well?" he asked as he watched the "cut" on Gaara's neck vanish. "No wonder you can't move much."

Gaara's reply was to send his sand after his prey once more.

Kabuto quickly retreated to the other side of the arena, putting as much space between himself and Gaara as he could until the sand doubled back and returned to its master. The moment it turned away, Kabuto pushed his foot down a little harder, leaving a small divot in the ground to mark his spot. He turned towards his opponent, took a deep breath, and then charged.

The sand reacted immediately, rising into the air and then stabbing down like the claw of an immense monster. Kabuto dove to the side, barely escaping with his life. The sand, however, did not have to draw itself out of the ground to strike at him again. The back end simply morphed into a new point and attacked again.

Kabuto rolled away from the second stab and then had to push off the ground to save himself from the next. Three more times the sand struck the ground, each just barely missing the Leaf genin, as he slowly retreated back to what he'd marked as the limit of the sand's range. Once he spotted the divot in the ground, he pulled a kunai from his pouch, attached an exploding tag to it, and then lobbed it at Gaara over the sand that was rushing towards him.

The sand broke of its attack and moved to intercept the new threat. The moment it moved away from him, Kabuto grabbed four more kunai and launched them at Gaara as he sprinted at an angle that would gradually bring him closer and closer to his opponent.

If he was hoping the sand would be destroyed by the exploding tag or would be unable to handle attacks coming from multiple directions, he was disappointed. The moment the second group of kunai got close to Gaara, a portion of the sand broke off from the rest of the cloud and blocked them. At almost the same time, the exploding tag went off, momentarily scattering the sand that had formed a shield between it and Gaara.

Kabuto was whipping kunai at Gaara every couple of seconds, trying to find some sort of a hole in the Sand-nin's defenses. However, even after he had almost completely emptied his weapon pouch, not a single kunai had gotten through. The sand was just too fast and too thick for him to penetrate. Gaara hadn't even had to move from the spot he'd been standing since the match began. In fact, he hadn't even moved his arms!

From within the egg-shaped shell of sand that was peppered with captured kunai, Gaara smirked. "Is that it?" he asked. "Perhaps you aren't as worthwhile as I thought. It doesn't matter; you're only an appetizer anyway."

The kunai clattered to the ground as the sand rose up and flashed after Kabuto, who quickly retreated back to the point that he'd marked as safe.

"Your problem is that your powers only extend so far," Kabuto told Gaara as he pushed his glasses farther up his nose.

"Your problem," Gaara replied, "is that you've taken my boredom to be a sign of my limitations." He finally moved, sliding his feet a little farther apart. The sand cloud that had been hanging in the air between them, almost waving in a nonexistent breeze, suddenly shot towards Kabuto.

Kabuto tried to jump away as the sand passed what had previously been its limit, but something reached out of the ground and snagged him by the ankles. He looked down and his eyes widened in horror at the sight of more sand reaching out of the grass beneath his feet and holding him in place. He quickly grabbed his final kunai from his weapon pouch and slashed at his binds. The instant he was free, he flipped backwards just as the sand slammed into the ground where he'd been standing.

The sand instantly changed directions, suddenly moving far faster than it had been previously. It caught Kabuto in midair and slammed him back into the wall behind him. Kabuto's eyes were closed and his head hung limply as the sand pulled him back, closing around him like a giant fist, and then slammed him back into the wall.

"I… surrender…" he whispered, a red mist coming out of his mouth with his words as his blood mixed with the air in his lungs.

Gaara slammed him into the wall a third time.

"Gaara is the winner," Hayate announced.

Gaara slammed Kabuto into the wall a fourth time.

"That's enough, the match is over," the jounin told him sternly.

The sand pulled Kabuto away and began to wind its way around his body, totally cocooning him. Gaara smiled and brought his hand up, a strange glint in his eyes.

Suddenly, the sand parted like a curtain, spilling a bleeding, broken Kabuto out onto the ground at the feet of Hayate as he appeared next to the sand prison, a sword in his hand.

He brought his other hand up and covered his mouth as he coughed before saying, "Next time I tell you the match is over, listen or I won't be cutting sand with this blade."

Gaara held his gaze for a moment and then shrugged. "He wasn't worth it anyway." Without another word, he turned and walked toward the stairs.

A few in the crowd clapped, most just looked confused or disturbed. Gaara didn't care.

ooo

Naruto watched with mixed feelings as Kabuto was carried away by the team of medic-nin. He'd expected Kabuto to do more. He'd expected Kabuto to heal himself the way he should be capable of doing by this point. He'd expected… he'd expected Kabuto to act like Orochimaru's minion and not like a skilled – but not unusually so – genin.

And then there was the invasion to think about. If Suna was part of the plan – assuming there even _was_ a plan in this reality – then what was Gaara waiting for? Shouldn't he have done something… anything? Watching Gaara go through his match without so much as a hint of an ulterior priority was almost as disturbing as the little clues he'd forced himself to overlook about the Grass-nin that ended up not being Orochimaru. Did it mean that Suna and Gaara were innocent? Did it mean that they were waiting for something else this time around?

He let out a slow sigh. It was hard to know a future and not expect things to line up with it. Even though he knew that this timeline was progressing very differently from the one he'd come from, he couldn't get his brain to stop looking for the few clues that he remembered from his original childhood. He just _wanted_ this to be his timeline.

Beside him, Sakura shivered, her face looking a bit pale.

Naruto let his concerns about the future slide to the back of his mind. He couldn't really control what was going to come; he'd just have to deal with it when it arrived. His friends, on the other hand, were here and could be helped right now. He put a hand on Sakura;s shoulder. "It'll be okay," he promised. "Just do your best."

"Easy for you to say," she replied. "You don't have to fight him in the next round."

From the other side of her Sasuke said, "You'll be fine. You're way stronger than Kabuto and you have the advantage of having seen how he fights. He doesn't know what you're capable of."

Sakura didn't look very convinced.

"We won't let anything happen to you, Sakura-chan," Naruto tried again. "If you need us, we'll step in and stop the fight."

Sakura did her best to smile and then shook her head. "That's not your job. I don't want to get either of you in trouble because I'm too weak to take care of myself."

"You're our teammate," Sasuke reminded her. "If you're in trouble, it _is_ our job to help you." He paused and then added, "But try not to get into trouble. I don't think those morons in the stands would appreciate me stopping another fight."

This actually got Sakura to chuckle and her coloring became a little more natural. "I'll try not to."

Below them, Rock Lee and Hyuuga Neji were walking across the battle grounds. Lee's excitement was barely containable. With every step he took, he seemed to have to force himself not to add a little skip. Neji, on the other hand, was as calm and collected as ever.

Naruto leaned a little farther over the rail, his own excitement starting to build. He'd seen the two of them face each other in the future, of course, but that would happen years from now when they were both so advanced that they both struggled to even land a solid punch on the other. Here, they were just starting out. They wouldn't know everything, but they also wouldn't be as close as they'd been in the future. Naruto had only ever seen them fight when it was a match between old friends; this one would be a battle between rivals.

"Watch this next match," he told Sasuke and Sakura needlessly. He was sure they already knew something of what to expect having seen Neji and Lee in action during the second part of the Exam, but it was worth mentioning again if for no other reason than to give Sakura something besides her future match with Gaara to think about. "It's going to be a good one."

ooo

"I'm glad we get to face each other so early, Neji-kun," Lee said with a happy smile as they faced each other and waited to be given permission to start.

"You shouldn't be," Neji replied. "It just means that your fate is that much closer than it would have been."

"This time will be different," Lee promised.

"We've fought almost every day since we graduated from the Academy," Neji reminded him. "The result is _never_ different. There are some hurtles too high to overcome."

Lee shook his head. "No, anyone can reach the highest pinnacle if they work hard enough."

Neji closed his eyes as a small smirk appeared on his lips. "There's just no reasoning with you. Arguing is pointless when one side can't see reality."

Hayate cleared his throat before Lee could reply. "Are you both ready?" he asked. The two genin nodded, all smiles vanishing instantly. "Begin!"

Lee's left hand slipped behind his back as his right came up in front of him. "This time will be different," he whispered again.

Neji's fingers flashed through the activation seals. "Byakugan!"

His left foot shifted forward, his right arm coming down to his hip while his left was held out in front of him. The perfect Juuken opening stance. "I will not enjoy bursting your bubble," he told Lee, "but you must be shown the reality of your fate." The muscles in Lee's legs tensed as he prepared to attack, but before he could Neji shook his head. "Take off your weights."

Lee's eyes widened in surprise. "What?"

"The weights, take them off. If I am going to prove to you that you will never be able to surpass the skill I was born into, I won't let you have an excuse to fall back on. Take them off and fight me with everything you have… so I can crush your illusions completely."

Lee's jaw tightened as he glanced into the stands. "Gai-sensei…"

"Isn't here," Neji finished for him. "If you are going to fight me, take them off."

Lee looked down at his legs, closed his eyes, and then nodded. "Very well, Neji-kun. I will fight you without holding back." He kneeled and removed the weights strapped to his legs, tossing them aside as though they weighed nothing.

Neji waited for him to stand and return to his starting stance. "Whenever you're ready."

To many of those watching, Lee seemed to lean forward and then vanish. Those with the training to follow the movement saw him cross the distance between himself and Neji in the blink of an eye. Very few genin level ninja could have moved so fast, even fewer could have blocked an attack from someone moving so fast, but Neji was nothing if not exceptional.

His left arm easily knocked away the initial punch and then he shifted slightly to the side to dodge a follow up kick. While Lee's leg was still in the air, Neji's right hand shot forward, seeking the spot on his teammate's chest that would end the match right away. Lee was too quick, however, as he pushed off the ground with his base foot, moving himself just out of range of Neji's hand.

Neji wasn't about to let Lee off the hook with only a near miss. He charged forward and was nearly on top of Lee before the other boy had touched down again, his arm cocked and ready to make sure that he connected this time.

Lee's foot flashed through the air so fast that Neji almost didn't see it until it was too late. He broke off his attack and leaned away. The kick passed so close to his nose that he could actually smell the spandex.

A smile appeared on Lee's face as his foot changed direction in mid-flight, pulling in closer to his body and the lashing out, catching Neji square in the face.

Neji's head snapped back as blood exploded from his now-broken nose. Lee didn't bother to give him a chance to recover. It took his two steps to slip inside Neji's defenses as the back of his fist struck his teammate's ribs. The Hyuuga gasped in pain and surprise, bringing his arms up in a desperate attempt to defend himself as Lee spun on his heel drove his foot past Neji's hands and into his stomach, doubling him over.

Lee settled for just a second and then ducked down and brought his fist up with the full force of a jump behind it, catching Neji under the chin and lifting him into the air.

At the height of his flight, Neji rotated himself just enough to get his hands and feet under him when he landed, but even then he did not come down gracefully. Blood ran freely down his face as he slowly stood and brought his cold white eyes to meet the burning black ones of his teammate. He stared at Lee in silence for a moment, and then wiped his hand across his face, smearing the blood and doing little to improve his appearance.

"You've gotten a little stronger," he admitted as he spit.

"I will definitely beat you this time, Neji-kun," Lee replied.

"Then you'll have to do better than this." Neji didn't wait for a response. He charged forward with what almost seemed to be as much speed as Lee had shown so far.

His arm came up to deliver another Juuken strike to Lee's chest, but once more Lee was too quick. He twisted away, and dropped low to sweep Neji's feet out from under him. Neji leaped, planted his hand on the ground and kicked out at Lee's head. Lee was up to the challenge, however, and he easily blocked the kick and sent another at Neji's chest before he had a chance to get his feet back under him.

Neji's free hand caught hold of Lee at the knee, his grip keeping the kick from reaching him and giving him a fulcrum to speed his turn in the air.

He landed on his right foot, his left circling back behind him, and continued to spin. "Kaiten!"

ooo

"What the hell?" Sasuke asked as he watched Lee be thrown across the battle ground by the force of the chakra released by the spinning Neji.

"I-it was Kaiten," Hinata whispered in awe, "but… but he shouldn't know that. It is a technique that is s-supposed to be exclusive to the Main Family. I have n-never seen anyone but my f-father perform it."

"Looks like it's not so exclusive anymore," Naruto said with a smile.

Sasuke closed his eyes and whispered, "Sharingan." His red irises began to track Neji and Lee's every movement. "Definitely not exclusive," he said with a smile.

Hinata didn't pay attention to the Uchiha's plan to try to steal her families special techniques, her eyes were glued to the fight below.

Naruto watched as Lee got back on his feet and went back on the offensive. His two friends were incredible, even at this early age. Lee's speed and power were probably already above chuunin level and he was only scratching the surface of what he was capable of. Neji's precision and vision were as amazing as ever and his movements were not those of a genin. The fact that they could even keep up with each other was amazing.

Maito Gai had been boastful of his team up until his death and with good reason. There probably weren't many in this timeline who'd gotten to hear those boasts yet, but there was no doubt that they would have to agree with him after seeing this match.

Naruto couldn't help but wonder how many times Kakashi would have to hear about this match while he and Gai were having their "battles."

He let his attention drift to Hinata and smiled. She was watching proof of Neji's genius – if she hadn't seen enough of it in the past already – and yet she didn't seem to be shrinking into the nervous wreck that he expected her to become. She was amazed, of course, but she didn't look scared. The Hinata that he'd started training with back when she had just returned from the Wave Country could never have watched this match without comparing herself to her cousin and wallowing in the knowledge that he was naturally more skilled than her. Her arms should have been drawn in close to her body and her fingers should have been pinching her lower lip, but Hinata had grown. She wasn't that little girl anymore.

As he continued studying her and admiring her growth, Hinata frowned in confusion, sensing his eyes on her, and then looked over at him.

Naruto quickly looked away. He hadn't meant to stare, or at least hadn't meant to be caught. He certainly didn't want her thinking that his looking at her meant anything more than it did; she needed to get over her crush as soon as possible for her own good. Of course, he belatedly realized, looking away like that was something that he'd seen girls with crushes often do when they were caught looking at the object of their affection. By not just meeting her gaze he might have sent the wrong signal…

He looked back up at her, but she'd already turned back to the fight.

Naruto cursed under his breath and shook his head in annoyance. Why were things always so complicated? It seemed like everything in his life was more difficult than it had to be.

_'What did I expect?'_ he asked himself with a small chuckle as a thought occurred to him. _'I got killed and ended up in the past instead of the afterlife! If I can't even manage something as simple as dying, why should anything else go smoothly for me?'_

ooo

Neji and Lee pushed away from each other and stared one another down, breathing hard. Blood was still running down Neji's face, but the damage to Lee was probably more extensive. When Neji grabbed Lee's knee just before performing the Kaiten, he'd damaged something within it and closed two of the tenketsu located there.

Lee could push through the pain, but whatever the damage was, it slowed him down slightly. Without his usual speed, he couldn't escape Neji's other attacks as much. The Hyuuga had landed three more solid strikes, two had only been on Lee's ribs – which hurt but didn't prevent him from moving the way he normally would – but the third had caught Lee in the right shoulder and that arm no longer operated properly.

On top of that, Neji's Kaiten made close combat – the only type Lee was skilled in – even more dangerous than it normally was.

He would have to stop the spin if he wanted to prove his ninja way to himself and to Neji. There could be no turning back now. He refused to lose to Neji.

"If I cannot stop his spin," he whispered as he let out one last deep breath and then straightened, "I will perform five hundred back flips without stopping."

He closed his eyes, pushed away all thoughts of fatigue and pain, and then opened them and charged.

Neji blocked Lee's punch and then brought his own leg up to block a low kick from his teammate before twisting to the side to avoid a second punch. As Lee's fist reached the extent of its reach, he swung it to the side to keep after Neji. Neji reached up to grab it and inflict more damage, but Lee changed tactics and lashed out with his other hand, connecting solidly with Neji's jaw.

Lee was standing at a weird angle. He sort of had part of his back to Neji and was almost facing a spot about a half-meter in front of the Hyuuga, but his taijutsu skills were great enough that he could compensate and do some real damage. Neji had the opportunity to finish immobilizing Lee's right shoulder, but he wasn't sure that it would be worth the punishment he'd receive as he tried to do it. His left foot began to shift back as he prepared to spin again and give himself a little breathing room, but at that moment, Lee's back foot slid forward and pushed the Hyuuga slightly off balance. It wasn't much, but it was enough to keep Neji from being able to spin the way he needed to.

Seizing his advantage, Lee stepped closer to Neji and grabbed his teammate by the shirt, preparing to throw him into the air.

Neji was off balance, but he didn't need to be centered to hit the tenketsu that he could clearly see right in front of him. As Lee's grip tightened on his shirt and his shoulder flexed in anticipation of the throw, Neji's hand came up and drove his middle finger into Lee's wrist. The tendons within the joint immediately relaxed as the nerves were temporarily paralyzed. Lee didn't even realize that his hand had opened until he started his lifting motion and felt the lack of weight.

He tried to bring his arms down to defend himself, but both of Neji's hands flashed forward before he could get into position. They connected with his chest and sent him flying away.

Lee landed on his back and tumbled through the dirt and grass for over a meter before coming to a stop. He tried to take a deep breath but found that his lungs couldn't fill up the way he wanted them to. Instead, he had to settle for a series of quick, painful breaths to get oxygen back into his system. Slowly climbing back to his feet, he turned and located Neji, who was standing in almost the same spot he'd been.

Both of them were beginning to wear down. Were it not for the damage he'd taken to his lungs, Lee would have been confident that he could wear Neji down and win that way, but even if it was an option, he didn't think he'd take it. He didn't want to prove that he had more stamina than Neji, they both already knew that. No, he wanted to show that his power had surpassed Neji's. That through nothing more than hard work and guts he had overcome the gap that had once separated them.

Anything less than that would be a hollow victory.

His body hated the shallow, unsatisfactory breaths that he was forced to take, but he could ignore such trivial needs as oxygen. Slowly he brought his hands up to the ready position and prepared himself.

His muscles ached and cried out in protest as he sprinted forward at top speed, but those complaints were easy to block out as well.

Neji's eyes widened in surprise at Lee's resilience as the bowl-cut genin bore down on him. So great was his surprise that he was a half second slow in bringing up his arm to block Lee's punch and took a blow to the chest just below the neck that stunned him.

Lee didn't bother slowing down to take pride in the pain on his rival's face; he was already ducking low and planting his hands on the ground. He drove his foot up into Neji's chin with everything he had and then leapt into the air after him.

"You've seen me use this before," he whispered as his body caught up to Neji's, perfectly mimicking the other boy's flight so that he almost seemed to be a shadow, "but you have never felt it." He flexed his hands and his arm wrappings came undone. "Don't worry, I will be careful not to kill you." The wrappings wound their way around Neji, pinning his arms at his side as the two of them began to spin faster and faster. "Now you will see that hard work can surpass genius."

o

o

AN: Seriously, is there any other song to listen to when writing a Gaara scene than Metallica's Enter Sandman? If there is, I don't want to know about it.

Well, as I said at the top of this chapter, I'm a bit sorry about the length, but this is more the size of a chapter that I had in mind when I started writing this story. The near 13K of the last chapter and the 15K of the one before it were just getting excessive. This chapter probably _would_ have been about that length, however, if my week hadn't been so busy.

Hopefully the fights were somewhat exciting (I doubt many of you thought Gaara was going to be out of the tournament this early) and not too drawn out or overly detailed. I really should have had Kabuto and Gaara fight before Sasuke and Sakura so I could have had a little more action in the last chapter and a little more character developing filler in this one. Bad planning on my part, I guess.

Anyway, next week will be the conclusion of the Lee-Neji fight and I think Jiraiya and Tsunade will show up a bit too. Should be fun, right? Please review and let me know what you thought.

Shinjuu Zanshu no Jutsu – "Inner Decapitation Technique" The user dives underground and grabs hold of their opponents ankles and pulls them down until only their head is left above ground. Kabuto tried it against Tsunade in canon; Kakashi used it successfully against Sasuke during the bell test.

Kaiten – "Heavenly Spin" Could also be called "Hakkeshou Kaiten" ("Eight Trigrams Palms Heavenly Spin"). Neji spins fast, he releases chakra from their chakra points, forms a dome around him and blocks any and all attacks.

Tenketsu – The holes from with chakra is released from the body.


	35. Chapter 34

Chapter 34

Chapter 34

o

Even with his arms pinned at his sides and spinning at blinding speeds as he was hurtling headfirst towards the ground, Neji was not helpless. In fact, he actually had several things going for him. For one, his arms being pinned at his sides meant that shifting them forward or backward brought them in closer to his body and created a little bit of slack in his bindings. Since Lee was behind him, he went with that direction. The slack created by the movement wasn't much, but it was enough to curl his hands into fists and then quickly wiggle his fingers through the wrapping, bringing them into contact with Lee's stomach.

He was also helped by the fact that he was already spinning, so he didn't really have to exert himself to create the Kaiten, other than the effort it took to force chakra out of his body.

His fingers pressed into Lee's stomach, pushing chakra into the coils located there. Were they not in such a precarious position, Lee probably would have noticed the way his stomach muscles instantly cramped up. The effort of performing the Primary Lotus, coupled with the concentration that it took to keep it from being a lethal attack, were enough of a distraction, however, that he didn't react in time to realize the danger he was in.

Neji closed his eyes and began to force chakra out of every tenketsu in his body. He would not create a Kaiten that was anywhere near as powerful as the ones he'd used in the match so far because he did not want to kill his teammate. They were basically tied together and the bindings were not made of anything that this form of chakra would instantly cut through. Lee would be held against the expanding vortex of chakra for at least a moment before being pushed away. If Neji wasn't careful, he could do some very real, and very deadly, damage.

With his near 360 degree vision, Neji saw Lee's eyes widen in surprise and horror as he felt the chakra hit him.

"Neji-kun! Don't!" Lee yelled as his wrapping snapped and he was hurled away.

Neji was now only about two meters off the ground and he no longer had Lee to guide him to the ground in a way that would save his life. To a normal genin, it would have been a fatal turn of events, but Neji was not a normal genin.

With Lee safely away, Neji forced more chakra through his tenketsu, expanding the Kaiten as he started to flip in the air. Without Kaiten, he wouldn't have had the time to right himself, but the vortex dug into the ground, creating a small crater that gave him just enough room to complete his flip before he hit the ground.

Even though he landed on his feet, the force of the impact was enough that his whole body cried out in protest. A sharp pain shot up his left leg and he looked down to find a small fracture running along his tibia. As the pressure and pain of the impact faded away, he pushed his weight down on the slightly broken leg and found that, even though it hurt like hell, it was still usable.

Barely two meters away, Lee struggled to get back on his feet. He took two stumbling steps to the side and shook his head to clear the cobwebs. Without the benefit of knowing what Neji's plan was, his landing had not been nearly as graceful and he was paying for it now… in fact, it had cost him everything.

"You're within the field of my hakke," Neji whispered as he slid his left leg forward, bending forward and lowering his hand until it was almost touching his foot. His right arm rose as he extended it, palm up. "I'm sorry, but you will see that there are some walls too high to climb… Juuken Hakke Sixty-Four Palms."

It was unfortunate that Lee was too obstinate to see the truth. He aggravated Neji to no end, but the Hyuuga still didn't relish the thought of crushing his teammate's dream. In the end, however, fate was fate. It could not be denied.

And it was Lee's fate to lose to a person born to be better than him.

He leapt forward, his hands aiming for the tenketsu just above Lee's sternum and the one under his fourth rib. The first would slow the flow of oxygen and blood to the brain; the second would cause a constriction of the diaphragm which would make it even more difficult to breath. With these two points pressed and the coils beneath them injured by the chakra pushed into them, it would take a miracle for Lee to continue the fight much longer. When the following sixty-two strikes found their targets, Lee would be lucky to still be conscious, much less able to fight.

Even with Lee's superior speed – which had already been diminished significantly during the fight – Neji was too close for him to dodge.

Lee brought his body lower to the ground and for a moment, it actually looked like he was going to try to dodge anyway. And then Neji realized that Lee wasn't dodging at all, he was _blocking_.

Lee's hand slammed into the ground and then, just as Neji was about to land his first series of strikes, he pulled his arm up, bringing a large boulder with it. Neji almost didn't have time to break off his attack. Striking the hard rock earlier than he expected to make contact with anything would probably have broken a couple of his fingers, but at the last second he was able to pull back and spin on his heel, brining him around to the other side of the boulder.

Lee clearly wasn't expecting such a quick recovery and was caught flatfooted, his back completely exposed. Neji couldn't hit the spots he'd originally been aiming for, but the back had plenty of vital areas he could attack. The spine was literally covered in chakra coils and there were dozens of tenketsu to choose from.

"Hakke two palms!" Neji's fingers pressed against the nape of Lee's neck and a spot between the second and third lumbar in his spine. With those pressed Lee's legs would be significantly weakened and his head would suddenly feel five times heavier to his neck.

"Four palms!" Three more strikes against the back to further weaken him and a fourth to not only damage his shoulder joint, but turn him around so Neji could finish the job properly.

"Eight!" With his wide field of vision, Neji could see the pain and fear in Lee's face as he realized that the end was near.

"Sixteen!" Lee had fought hard, but fate was inevitable.

"Thirty-two!" Something wet struck Neji's face, a small tear from his teammate's eyes. Even as Lee's body recoiled in pain, his heart was already beginning to feel the weight of this latest defeat. Neji almost wished he could break off the attack and just leave it at that, but fate did not care about sparing a pawn's dignity. It did not care about hurt feelings or the unfairness of life.

Reality was harsh, but it could not be denied. It was going to slap Lee across the face and wake him from his hopeless dream even as Neji sent him into merciful unconsciousness.

"Sixty-Four," his voice was more of a whisper now as his fingers automatically sought out and pressed the last series of tenketsu to finish off the inevitable.

Neji stepped back and let out a slow breath as Lee was knocked back, striking the boulder that he'd ripped from the earth, and then falling face-first onto the dusty ground.

As Hayate stepped forward to check Lee and then announce the winner, Neji stepped forward. "Now you see," he whispered. "A dog can howl at the moon all he wants, but he'll never touch it. Fate is not subject to our—"

Before he could say another word, Lee was on his feet. One hand caught Neji by the shirt, the other reached way back to deliver a vicious punch. Neji tensed, he was too surprised and too tired to defend himself. Lee's tenketsu were closed, there shouldn't be any power behind his punch, but if there was…

The punch never landed. Lee's grip on his shirt relaxed and the bowl cut ninja slumped forward against his teammate, causing Neji to stumble back. Lee wasn't even awake enough to do anything but slide down Neji's body until he came to rest once more on the ground, his outstretched hand gently clutching at the Hyuuga's sandal.

Hayate waited a few seconds longer to see if there would be a second recovery and then pointed at Neji. "Winner: Hyuuga Neji!"

The crowd's applause was long and enthusiastic.

Neji barely even heard it as he continued to stare down at Lee's unconscious body.

ooo

"He was telling the truth," Sasuke noted, his voice taking on a strange tone. "He was stronger than Lee."

Naruto cast a sideways glance at his friend and frowned as a little shiver ran down his spine. There was a certain _lustful_ quality in Sasuke's red eyes that reminded him an awful lot of a different Sasuke. He had a sinking suspicion that Sasuke would have taken Sakura's hesitation in their match as a chance to end things quickly had he seen Lee and Neji's fight first.

It had been so nice to see Sasuke set aside his own desires and allow a teammate to move on and have a chance to prove her worth, but at the first sign of real power, Sasuke hungered to taste it first hand. There was a good chance that Sasuke would be less inclined to take Orochimaru's offer, should it ever come, but he would probably still be sorely tempted.

"Are you wishing you hadn't forfeited?" Naruto asked, carefully watching Sasuke's face for his reaction.

It was about what he'd thought it would be. The young Uchiha's eyes widened slightly as the thought of himself down there fighting Neji drifted through his mind. For a long moment, he didn't say anything as they watched Neji follow the team of medic-nin carrying Lee's unconscious body back to the infirmary, but then he closed his eyes and sighed.

"Maybe a little," he admitted. When his eyes opened, the Sharingan was gone, taking the lustful look with it. "Still, I can fight them another time and I won't have to deal with them being beaten half to death when I do it. I wouldn't want anything tainting my victory."

Naruto was thankful for the truthfulness, though he could tell that the excuse had been a little halfhearted. It was true that if he challenged either of them to a sparring match, he could see them at full strength, but he could still have gotten them at close to their peak even if they met later in the tournament. A genin was allowed to receive minor medical treatment so long as they were ready to fight by the time their next match rolled around. The rule prevented something like dumb luck, or cheating, to decide the final outcome. If, through the luck of the draw, someone found himself in a difficult bracket, he wouldn't be at quite as much of a disadvantage should he meet someone in the finals who had a far easier road.

Naruto actually suspected that the rule was primarily in place for the sake of those gambling on the outcome. After all, it wouldn't do for some no-name to win it all because he was lucky enough to draw the easier bracket while all the favorites took each other out in the first and second round.

"Are you ready?" Sasuke asked Sakura, turning away from Naruto to look at the rather pale faced kunoichi.

"No," she whispered. "I think I'm going to be sick."

"You've still got a few minutes before they start the next round," Naruto said with a smile. "The bathrooms are just down the hall if you need them." He cast a surreptitious glance at Temari and Gaara who were standing at the opposite end of the opening; neither seemed to be paying much attention to the Leaf genin. "Plus," he whispered, "I can drag my match out a bit. Just say the word and I'll keep Temari on her feet until the sun goes down."

Sakura rolled her eyes and shook her head. "She's strong; you can't just mess around this time."

"You'll be fine," Sasuke said, his eyes also darting towards the Suna genin. "Just do your best."

"She ought to just forfeit," Shikamaru grumbled from his spot near the stairs.

Naruto looked over at Shikamaru and rolled his eyes playfully. "Not all of us are lame asses like you… well, except for Sasuke." He started to duck on pure instinct, but Sakura couldn't reach him without pushing Sasuke out of the way and she didn't seem to have the strength or will to waste on pretend fighting anyway.

Shikamaru shrugged. "If you'd seen what he can do, you'd be telling her to forfeit too." There was a little look in his eyes that told Naruto he was digging for info.

"I've seen it."

"I don't mean in that fight against Kabuto; that was just him playing around."

Naruto grinned and winked knowingly at his friend. "I wasn't talking about that either."

Shikamaru's eyes narrowed and his head moved up and down just enough to be noticed for what it was, if a person knew what to look for. Naruto had seen the movement hundreds of times over the years; he definitely knew a "thank you" when he saw one. His reply nod was a little more obvious, but just as clear.

"I wish you'd both stop talking about it," Sakura hissed as she pushed away from the railing and began making her way towards the hall. Before anyone could say anything, Hayate announced that it was time for the next match.

"Well, that's my cue," Naruto said. "I'll see you guys shortly."

"Only if they visit you in the infirmary," Temari retorted. She opened her fan and leaped over the railing, riding the airwaves down to the ground next to Hayate.

Naruto watched her flight and shook his head. "You know, I think she might be planning on trying to kill me," he sighed as he shoved his fists in his pocket and began walking towards the stairs. "Tell Sakura-chan to give me a holler when she's feeling a little more ready for her fight."

"N-Naruto-kun?" Hinata called out just before he reached the stairs.

Naruto looked over his shoulder and smiled at her.

"Be careful," she said with a shy smile of her own, "and d-do your best."

"Nah," the blond chuckled, his eyes shifting to meet the cold stare Gaara was giving him from behind the young Hyuuga, "where's the fun in ending it so quickly?" And then he continued on down to the arena floor.

ooo

"Just how many people do you owe money to?" Jiraiya asked as he handed Tsunade a chipped tin cup full of tea.

"I've never seen him before," she whispered as she took a sip, shivering despite the warmth of the day.

"He knew all about you," Jiraiya pointed out, "even the Hemophobia."

"It's not that big of a secret," Tsunade replied dejectedly. "He probably just worked for some petty crime lord."

"Or at least the owner of a gambling hall."

"But that doesn't explain how he knew that you were looking for Tsunade-sama," Shizune pointed out.

"Or how a gambling hall owner was able to afford someone who could hold his own against one of the Sannin for so long," Jiraiya agreed.

"You weren't exactly fighting all out," Tsunade said with a sigh as she took a deeper sip of the tea, slowly relaxing.

Jiraiya grinned. "I didn't want to kill him before he explained who he was and what he was after. Still, he fought weird. He never really attacked after cutting his arm – if that even counts as attacking – he just make it hard to pin him down and finish him off."

Tsunade shrugged. "So?"

Jiraiya glanced at her and lifted an eyebrow. "_So_? Why would he bother making himself known if he wasn't going to actually try to do anything? Why would he pick a fight with us if he knew who we were? What was the point?"

He looked down at the man who was bound and unconscious and shook his head. "If he was after money, he should have fought different. He knew a bunch of ninjutsu I'd never seen before, but none of them were offensive. He was just…" Jiraiya's eyes widened. "Finish your tea, we're leaving."

"What? What's wrong?" Shizune asked.

"He wasn't fighting to beat us," Jiraiya explained as he reached down and lifted the man onto his shoulder with relative ease. "He was just trying to slow us down. A few hours was all he cost us, but that might have been enough." He snatched the cup out of a Tsunade's hands and threw the tea out before tucking it into his bag. "We won't make it back to Konoha until tomorrow now."

Tsunade was following his thinking now and she quickly got to her feet. "And tomorrow might be too late," she whispered as all three took off at top speed down the winding dirt path.

ooo

Temari was not used to being weaker than any of her opponents. She was the daughter of the Kazekage; she'd been trained by the elite jounin and even her father since before she could even really walk or talk. It wasn't just her, of course. All of the Kazekage's children had started receiving instruction at a very young age.

Kankuro, who was a year younger than her, was arguably one of the greatest puppet users in the village. There were some in Suna who whispered that he might one day rival the great master Sasori, though Temari considered this to be overstated flattery. Given what Sasori was rumored to have been capable of, the only reason anyone would compare him to Kankuro was to heap praise on the son of the Kazekage. In Temari's opinion, Kankuro had a much better chance of surpassing crazy old Chiyo than he did of catching up with a legend like Sasori.

As the oldest child, Temari had always been the strongest. Kankuro tried to claim that they were nearly equal in power now that they were getting closer to reaching their adult height and strength, but it simply wasn't true. Kankuro was strong, but Temari could still beat him in a straight fight and – more importantly – she was smarter. She was always plotting several moves ahead, maneuvering her enemy into little traps that she'd set.

Her claim as the strongest came with a small disclaimer that could be summed up in one word: Gaara. Her youngest brother was different. With the One-Tailed Shukaku sealed inside of him, he was abnormally powerful and exceptionally unstable. As a child he would lash out at people for no apparent reason, sometimes without even seeming to realize what he was doing. Their father trained him personally, trying to give the power of the demon within him shape and control, but all it did was make Gaara more deadly. As he got older, what had started out as random or accidental killings became cold, intentional murders. Gaara seemed to stop caring about anyone but himself, and that made him even more frightening than he was when he was simply a little boy who couldn't control his actions.

Naruto didn't act like Gaara, thankfully, but there was something about him that began to unnerve her as their match progressed. He reminded her of Gaara in more ways than one, though she couldn't quite pin down what all those ways were. The one that she could see was the way that Naruto seemed so completely confident about the outcome of a fight… it was just "Gaara-ish" to her.

The first time she'd seen him in action was in the Forest of Death, though at that time she'd thought that perhaps one of Konoha's jounin was simply watching out for his students. There was no way that a genin could counter Gaara's sand so easily, let alone that three such genin could all be found on the same team. Then she watched him fight in the prelims and realized that he was a bit more than his boisterous antics let on. And finally, as she watched him fight against Kankuro, she'd seen still more of what he was capable of. She'd thought that there was a good chance that she'd actually have to use her full strength – or close to it, anyway – in order to defeat him, but she hadn't thought that she would have any real trouble beating him.

Temari knew that Gaara was obsessed with him. She'd seen the way her little brother's eyes tracked Naruto every time they were around each other. When Gaara wandered off to go looking for Naruto during the month between the second test and the finals, Temari had been the one to tell Baki that they needed to stop him before he caused an incident. It wasn't often that Gaara found anyone so riveting that he would wait over a month before killing him, but Naruto had definitely piqued his interest somehow.

The thought had occurred to her that it might be better to forfeit and let Gaara face Naruto in the next round, but after her defeat at the hands of Shikamaru – and it _was_ a defeat in her eyes – she needed to redeem herself. Plus, it grated on her nerves the way he talked about prolonging the fight so that his little pink-haired girlfriend could work up the nerve to go out and lose to Gaara. It had probably been ten years since anyone other than Gaara had dared to take her so lightly.

If she could beat Naruto, Gaara would probably lose interest in him anyway, and then she would just have to forfeit rather than face her brother.

The problem was, she wasn't sure that she _could_ beat Naruto. All his talk about dragging things out hadn't just been idle boasting, he was doing it. She'd realized that things might not go as smoothly as she'd planned when her first attack with her fan had simply been brushed aside as if it were nothing.

The wind the fan produced and her natural inclination towards wind element chakra worked in harmony to amplify each other. The gusts produced by the fan pushed her chakra farther and with greater force than she could achieve on her own and her chakra increased the damage done by the wind from the fan. She'd knocked down trees from almost fifty meters away with a really powerful attack, yet Naruto seemed to have no trouble stopping it.

Her first attack, from nearly point blank range, had been stopped by a swing of his hand. It was like he'd cut right through it or simply cancelled it out by using a gust of wind that equaled her own. At first, she hadn't believed it. She'd assumed it was some sort of trick, or fluke, or something, but after only a few experiments she was certain that he was a wind element user as well. Wind was supposed to be the rarest of elements. Even in the Wind Country, where Sunagakure was located, there existed very few wind chakra users. Her jounin, Baki, was the only other person she'd met who was naturally inclined towards wind. There were more, of course, but not many.

And Uzumaki Naruto might be the best she'd ever seen. There was something about the way that he fell into her traps with a knowing smile on his face, and then escaped them without any damage, that told her he was holding back even as she threw almost everything she had at him. Perhaps even more annoying than being toyed with as the fact that Naruto kept looking over at the waiting room, probably looking for the pink-haired girl to give him permission to start acting serious.

It was insulting that he apparently thought so little of her. And Temari hated being insulted.

"If you don't start taking this seriously," she growled after he glanced over his shoulder again. The fight had already been dragged out to nearly forty-five minutes, "I'm going to have to stop playing with you."

Naruto returned his attention to her and lifted an eyebrow as if to ask if she'd been paying attention to the "fight."

She'd definitely been paying attention and she was tired of dealing with it. After dealing with the frustration that was Shikamaru, Temari wasn't going to allow herself to look bad a second time. Naruto was obviously stronger than she was and his wind chakra abilities were at least equal to hers despite the fact that he seemed to be holding a lot back, but he was stupid for simply stalling. He was giving her a chance to see what weaknesses he might have and to deduce how much more power she needed to add to her arsenal to beat him.

It was a good thing that she'd maneuvered Naruto so that she had her back to the spectators…

"Your little girlfriend is going to die," Temari told him with a smile as she held her open fan in front of her. "Gaara doesn't like being denied a kill. After that last match, he'll probably kill her in one shot."

Naruto shrugged. "Sakura-chan can handle it. He won't have as easy of a time as you think."

"You don't know Gaara."

"You'd be surprised what I know," he informed her with a grin. "I probably know Gaara better than you ever will."

Temari found this to be a strange comment, given that Naruto had only met Gaara a month ago and that he was near the top of Gaara's list of people he'd like to kill. Were she not trying to win this match, she might have considered asking him to explain himself, but all she was really doing was trying to plant the idea in his head that he should look back towards Gaara and his pink-haired teammate.

And then he did it.

Temari's thumb was in her mouth before Naruto had even completely turned his head. If he noticed the movement, he gave no sign. A split second later, she wiped the blood across her fan and began to swing the fan as she said, "Kuchiyose: Kirikiri Mai!"

Naruto's head whipped around, but Temari knew his fate was already sealed. She'd only learned the summoning technique a few weeks before they'd left to come to Konoha for the Chuunin Exam and she'd been given explicit orders not to use it unless absolutely necessary. In her opinion, this was necessary. She couldn't take another defeat like the one she'd already suffered, especially not to someone like Uzumaki Naruto who seemed to be even more of a loser than Shikamaru. Shikamaru had been infuriatingly clever, staying two steps ahead of her – something no one else had ever managed – and then giving up right when he'd captured her, but he at least acted like he was taking her seriously for the most part. Naruto was treating her like someone he could hold off forever without worry… like a child he was just pretending to fight with.

For a brief second, Kamatari was visible within the gust of wind that her fan produced. The weasel's sleek white body clothed in a tight-fitting black vest looked almost comical with the enormous sickle in his paws and the large patch over his left eye, but there was nothing comical about what he could do.

"Get 'em," he whispered as the blade began to spin and he suddenly seemed to vanish as he moved faster than the human eye could see.

"Just the boy," she called out, not even sure if he could hear her with the speeds he was traveling. She didn't want to destroy half the arena, but at least it would be the half that didn't have any spectators sitting on it.

Naruto sprang back, apparently trying to put a little more space between himself and the death that was rushing at him, but it was already far too late for that. Kamatari could not be defeated.

The blond's fingers formed a quick series of seals and then he brought his hand to his mouth as he said, "Suiton: Mizzu Rappa!" An enormous spout of water erupted from his mouth, flying right at the oncoming wind and the weasel hidden within it.

It was a pointless technique; powerful, but completely incapable of stopping Kamatari, who would cut right through the water like it was nothing. Temari had seen Kamatari cut a sand dune in half; there was no way a level C ninjutsu like Mizzu Rappa would have any effect on him.

And it didn't. Just as she'd thought, the water parted almost instantly. The second it did, however, Naruto's hand made another one of his chopping motions that signaled his use of something similar to Baki's Kaze no Yaiba.

The wind struck him just after he made the movement. Temari waited for him to topple over, probably cut in half, but he remained standing. Instead, Kamatari reappeared just behind him, a very confused look on his face and the handle to his sickle between his paws. The blade of the sickle was stuck in the ground about half a meter in front of Naruto.

Kamatari looked at his broken weapon and then looked at Temari and shook his head. "I'll get 'em next time," he promised as he vanished in a puff of smoke, taking the sickle blade with him.

Naruto let out a deep breath that he'd apparently been holding and wiped the back of his hand across his brow. "That was close," he said with a nervous chuckle. "I didn't realize you could do something like that already."

Temari didn't have an answer. Normally she always had some comment to make – often times a sarcastic or annoyed one. People were stupid and they deserved to be told so. She had no answer for what she'd just seen. To her knowledge, no one had ever blocked Kamatari. She could see how he'd done it; the water showed him where the weasel was and then it was just a matter of hitting him with a wind blade, but to have come up with that so quickly when he'd never even seen the technique before…

She turned and looked up at Gaara who was watching the match with great interest, though she knew none of it had to do with her. Gaara was one of the most powerful people she knew. His sand could protect him and attack his enemies simultaneously with little more than a thought from him. The rest of their village was right to be afraid of him; he could be truly terrifying. And yet, as she looked up at him after having just witnessed what Naruto could truly do, Temari felt something for Gaara that she'd never felt before: fear.

She'd been afraid _of_ Gaara more times than she cared to remember. He threatened to kill her almost once a week, sometimes more. Kankuro received the threat nearly daily. But this was the first time that she really thought that there was a chance, even if only a slim chance, that Gaara might have found something that could hurt him. Something that could kill him.

If that happened, she wasn't sure how she would feel. Would she weep for her little brother or rejoice over the death of a monster?

She supposed she wouldn't know until they got there.

"I forfeit," she told Hayate and then turned to walk away, ignoring Naruto's protests and the cheers that went up from the home crowd.

ooo

As they walked through the hall towards their destination, the tall man and the short girl he was walking with heard the roar from the crowd and stopped for just a second to listen.

"Naruto, do you think?" Tenten asked, looking up at her sensei.

Gai gave her a big, toothy grin. "It seems that Kakashi's student is unexpectedly full of the power of youth today."

Tenten rolled her eyes and the two of them continued down the hall. "Let's hope he's not as full of it as Lee and Neji. They're lucky they didn't kill each other out there."

Gai's large hand patted her on the shoulder. "Now, now, Tenten, you shouldn't fault them for throwing themselves wholeheartedly into their beautiful corrivalry. Young men, such as Lee and Neji, simply cannot hold back when the heat of the battle takes them."

"And if they'd killed each other then where would we be?" Tenten asked in an annoyed voice. She was exceptionally happy that it was only a hypothetical question so she could pretend that such a thing wouldn't completely crush her. The very thought of them _really_ dying would made her stomach twist painfully. If she lost her two best friends, it would probably be the same as dying herself.

Gai didn't have a chance to respond as they reached the infirmary, but as he pushed them open he whispered, "Someday, Tenten, your passionate fires will be stoked and then you will understand."

Tenten seriously doubted that, but she could hardly say so as Neji looked up at them from his spot next to Lee's bed. Neji's shirt was off and his chest and stomach were tightly wrapped with bandages, as was his left leg. Around his neck hung several lose bandages that had probably been over his nose before he pulled them off. A broken nose wasn't something that could be fixed or treated all that well with bandages anyway, but without them the swelling around his face was far more apparent.

Kabuto and Kankuro were no where to be found. Apparently Kankuro had woken and left since he wasn't all that badly injured outside of the punishment he'd received from Naruto's fists, while Kabuto had been taken directly to the actual Konoha Hospital to have his serious wounds treated.

"Sensei," Neji said with a small bow of his head, though he didn't stand.

"You were victorious once again," Gai noted. Tenten thought he almost sounded disappointed.

"Of course," Neji replied, though the haughtiness that normally accompanied those words was strangely absent. "Fate is fate."

Gai sighed and shook his head. "Your next match will be against Hyuuga Hinata. Are you going to be able to make it?"

"Most of my injuries were minor and the rest won't cause me any trouble against _her_."

"Are you going to lose your head over this 'Main House' business?"

Neji was silent for a moment and then shook his head. "No."

Gai gave him a piercing look from under his thick eyebrows. "I want your word, a warm promise that you won't take this match personally."

Neji stared at him and then turned back to Lee. "Are you going to try to stop the match if I don't promise?" he asked softly.

"Yes."

"Then I promise."

Gai's seriousness vanished instantly and he gave his student a warm smile and lightly patted him on the head in a way that they all knew Neji hated. "Good. Why don't you get your shirt on and Tenten will walk with you to the waiting area? I will sit with Lee until he wakes."

Neji nodded, collected his things and followed Tenten to the door. Just before they left the room, Gai called out. "Neji… congratulations on your victory. Good luck in your next match. I know that you will warm my heart with your proud efforts."

Neji stopped, but didn't turn around or reply. After a moment, he continued out the door and Gai turned back to Lee. "Come now, Lee, we both know you are awake. There is no need to feel shame in your efforts."

Lee's eyes opened somewhat reluctantly, but they did not rise to meet Gai's. "Forgive me, Gai-sensei," he whispered, "I couldn't prove that hard work can overcome genius."

"You proved plenty, Lee," Gai told him gently, his eyes becoming glassy and his voice slightly choked. "You truly were the beautiful green beast of Konoha today."

"But I didn't win."

"Emerging victorious is not always the only way to win. Sometimes simply pushing yourself and your opponent farther than either of you has ever gone is a victory in and of itself. Neji will still pretend to feel superior to you, but I can see that the fires of your youth have ignited something within him as well." Gai smiled and carefully patted Lee on the shoulder. "I believe that he shall not reach the summer time of adulthood without tasting defeat at your hands."

"I do not know, Gai-sensei… every time I think that I am catching him, I find that I'm as far behind as ever."

"That is because Neji has to work hard to stay ahead of you," Gai whispered. "Even in defeating you to prove his superiority, he acknowledges that hard work is needed because he does not only rely on his genius. You taught him this… with my help, of course!"

Lee smiled and rubbed his finger under his nose as he sniffled. He let out a slow breath and sat up so that he could look his mentor in the eyes. "Thank you Gai-sensei. Next time, I shall push Neji-kun even farther! If I'd had the time to open more of the Hachimon, I could have beaten him for sure."

Gai smiled proudly, flashing his brilliant white teeth and giving Lee a thumbs up. "If I cannot teach you to open them faster so you can achieve your goal, I will run a thousand laps around Konoha on my fingertips!"

"And if I cannot learn to open them more quickly and open more of them by the end of next year, I will find a quarry and carry a day's worth of their rocks for them faster than they could do it on their own!"

The two nearly-identical ninja smiled at each other and then threw their arms around one another as they cried.

"Gai-sensei!"

"Lee!"

At that moment, medic-nin entered the room to check on his patients. He stopped dead in his tracks at the sight that greeted him, and then turned right around and walked out without a word.

ooo

"Sorry about that, Sakura-chan," Naruto said as he climbed the stairs. "I tried to give you some time to get ready, but Temari took it a little personal…"

Sakura shook her head and smiled in spite of her nerves. "You're a dork, Naruto," she said, "but I love you. Thanks for trying."

Truth be told, were it not for the fact that she was about to go up against one of the scarier genin in the tournament, she would have had a lot more to say to Naruto. Questions of how he'd done what he'd done in the few minutes of his match that she'd caught were creeping around the edges of her brain, but she couldn't entertain them while a match with Gaara was about to start.

From what Shikamaru and Hinata had told her when she and Sasuke returned, the whole match had gone about the same way that it ended. Naruto had totally dominated from start to finish. Sakura had expected him to win, easily even, but she'd almost thought that he'd played around too much when Temari used her summoning jutsu. For him to block something that no one else could even see…

Naruto nodded. "Good luck out there. You already know that he uses sand, so watch out for it. He'll probably try to end things quickly, so don't fall asleep waiting for Hayate-san to tell you to start. Water jutsu might slow the sand down a bit, but not a lot. He can make more from the ground anyway, but it's not as good as the stuff in his gourd. Genjutsu should work on him, but the sand will still protect him if you try to attack…"

"There were a lot of 'buts' in there," Sakura sighed. "Should I even bother?"

"You never know until you try," the blond said with a grin. "He's not unbeatable and he's not very fast. The sand slows him down a lot and his taijutsu isn't great if you can get past his defenses. You'll just have to figure out how to do it."

"That's a lot of information," Shikamaru noted curiously. "How do you know all that?"

Naruto's lower lip shifted slightly as if he were about to bite it, but then realized what he was doing. "I have my methods," he said with a sly smile, "and Gaara and I have an… interesting… relationship."

At that moment, the subject of their conversation walked past them on his way towards the stairs where Naruto was still standing. "This will be quick," he promised Sakura without looking at her.

He paused when he reached Naruto, his cold eyes glaring at the blond, but he didn't say anything. He simply nodded fractionally and then went down the stairs.

Sakura let out a slow breath. "Well, that doesn't sound good," she joked weakly.

"You'll be fine," Sasuke told her. He turned to look at Naruto, expecting the blond to offer similar words of encouragement, but Naruto was no longer there.

The four genin stepped closer to the stairs and looked down them. On the next landing down, Naruto had just reached out and grabbed Gaara by the elbow, turning the red head around. What followed next was a quick, whispered conversation that didn't seem to impress Gaara too much. In fact, even Naruto seemed unsettled by whatever it was that he was saying.

When Naruto finished saying his piece, Gaara looked down at his elbow and said, "If you don't want to die now instead of out there after I'm done with your friend, let go."

The blond released Gaara and watched silently as the red head walked out to the arena grounds.

"What was that about?" Shikamaru asked.

Naruto looked up and smiled the stupid smile he used when he was trying to look innocent. "Just giving him some friendly advice."

Sakura didn't feel like talking anymore and she definitely didn't feel like wondering about the weirdness of Naruto yet again. She steeled herself for what was to come and marched resolutely down the stairs without saying goodbye to anyone. She'd trained hard for this day. Anko, Yugao, and Rin had all helped her in some way or another. She'd thought for sure that she'd lose to Sasuke and hadn't been able to convince herself that she could go all out against him.

Against Gaara, she would have to give it her all or she would die a very sad, pitiful death in front of a lot of people. Her mother and father were in the stands watching, she couldn't let be so cowardly as to fall apart before she even really got into a match.

"Good luck," Naruto whispered as she past him.

Sakura couldn't really hear him.

ooo

"Well, what do you think?" Rin asked Kakashi as they watched Sakura step out onto the battle grounds and walk to where Gaara and Hayate were already standing.

Kakashi scratched his head. "It will probably be a little rough for her, but you know more of what she can do than I do at this point."

Rin smiled. "She's strong, really strong, but that Gaara guy is still out of her league. Give her another year or so and you won't even recognize her, but after a month? Times are too peaceful for kids to be able to reach his level at this age… though Naruto seems to be more than he appears."

"Naruto's always been unpredictable," Kakashi agreed. "I think he's enjoying rubbing it in the faces of everyone who had a hand in his education over the years. He's probably hurting a few pocketbooks as well."

"What about you? Did you violate the third of the three sins?"

"It didn't seem fair, so I abstained this time around."

Rin giggled and punched him lightly in the arm. "Didn't want to bet against Naruto and Sakura?"

"Something like that, though I have to tell you, I could have made enough to retire."

Rin let out a low whistle and leaned in closer as she whispered, "You were going to bet on Naruto?"

"A hundred to one odds and he hasn't even broken a sweat while beating the Kazekage's oldest two children. I'm not saying I knew he was that good, but he's one of those people who just makes you want to believe in him. When he told me he was strong enough to win the whole thing, I believed him."

Rin nodded and looked back down at Sakura and Gaara as they prepared to face off. "Did you ever feel like the other villagers weren't so wrong in the way they treated Naruto?" she asked softly.

"What do you mean by that?"

"I'm not saying it was his fault that the Fourth died, I know it wasn't, but he's got…" her voice trialed off and she sighed. "For a while I thought that it would be better for it to be gone from our lives even if it meant losing the last piece of sensei and Kushina."

Kakashi was quiet for a moment and then he sighed and lowered his eyes. "Yes," he admitted, "there were times when I thought it would be worth it just to be rid of that thing. But once you get to know Naruto, it's impossible to think like that anymore. He's not just a piece of sensei and Kushina; he's the _best_ of both of them."

Rin smiled. "Then I'll have to make sure I spend some time getting to know him before I head back. The best of both of them must be quite the sight to behold."

ooo

Sakura was afraid of Gaara. She would have been perfectly willing to admit it openly, but that was unnecessary since it was clearly written across her face anyway. The way he acted, the power that she'd seen from him, the constant killer intent that seemed to roll off of him… it all combined to make him terrifying to her. The way he'd said that he would kill Naruto – and Sasuke too, if he got in the way – without batting an eye or giving any sign that it would be emotionally difficult for him to snuff out the lives of her friends chilled her to the bone.

There was just something _wrong_ about him. His intense eyes staring out from those strange dark circles gave his face a slightly unhinged look to it.

People weren't supposed to be like that. They weren't supposed to be able to kill without qualm. Ninja were supposed to kill their emotions in order to complete their jobs, but Gaara had taken it to a level that was out of the norm. He seemed to relish the killing or the idea of it anyway.

As they waited for the fight to start, Gaara's eyes seemed to bore into her. She could feel the pressure of them, but she dared not meet them. Instead, her eyes remained on his feet, watching as his toes flexed and shifted in his sandals. They looked like any other feet, but they were holding up a monster.

What could she do against someone like him?

_'Just wait for Naruto and Sasuke to save you,'_ a voice jeered at her. _'That's what you usually do anyway.'_

Sakura shook her head, trying to deny the voices words, but she knew they were true. She _did_ get saved a lot. She used to look down on Naruto, especially in the Academy and when they first became Team Seven. It had been one of the greatest disappointments of her life when he was placed in a team with her and Sasuke. Someone like Chouji or Shikamaru would have been much better. They were lazy, but they didn't talk as much and they certainly didn't make a habit of embarrassing her in front of everyone.

Now, she couldn't imagine anyone but Naruto on her team. He was always there to smile and encourage her, to offer a helping hand or a kind word. He just genuinely wanted to be her friend and she genuinely loved having him as one.

And Sasuke… she just genuinely loved Sasuke. It had started as a school girl crush that probably didn't mean anything. She didn't really know him back then and she felt bad for the way she'd acted. Now that she did know him, however, she found those feelings only magnified. Yes, he was handsome, talented, and still a bit mysterious, but he could also be kind in his own way. He didn't have to help her during their times training together after Kakashi had dismissed him. He didn't have to pick up the slack when she wasn't keeping up during their missions. He didn't have to give her that little half smile of his whenever they were talking. But he did all of those things and many more.

Naruto had once told her that if she wanted to be around to help Sasuke restore his clan she'd have to help him kill his brother. She _did_ want to be around for the restoring the clan part – if Sasuke wanted her – but at the moment she wasn't sure how much help she'd be for the killing part. Sasuke's brother had wiped out the whole Uchiha clan, apparently, he'd have to have been a lot stronger than Gaara.

Sakura knew without a doubt that he and Sasuke would come to her rescue if they were needed, regardless of the consequences to themselves, but this time she didn't want them to. It wasn't quite the same as helping Sasuke with his brother, but it would be only her second real fight against someone who wasn't a member of her team where she couldn't just let Sasuke and Naruto do all the work. Her first fight had ended with her nearly unconscious; she was determined to make sure that this ended differently…

She just hoped that "differently" didn't mean it was ending with her dead.

Hayate coughed and then called out, "The second fight of the second round… Begin!"

The sand came at Sakura almost instantly, just as Naruto had told her it would. Sakura pushed chakra into her legs and flipped backwards, throwing a handful of kunai at Gaara at the height of her jump to discourage the sand from continuing to chase her. Her fingers were already together before she'd even landed, forming seals.

"Doton: Retsudo Tenshou!" Her hand slammed into the ground, shattering the earth between her and Gaara and causing it to slowly shift. Had anyone been using a jutsu to travel under the ground, they would have been killed instantly. With Gaara standing above the ground, the jutsu didn't really do much to him, but it did create a large number of boulders – though they were primarily made of dirt, rather than stone.

Retsudo Tenshou was one of the jutsu that Rin had taught her when they took a break from medical ninjutsu. It was something she'd learned during the war, though she wouldn't go into anymore detail than that. It was good for fighting enemies that liked to hide underground and, when it was coupled with a jutsu that Yugao had taught her, it made for an interesting combination.

"Doton: Iwayado Kuzushi!" The jutsu allowed Sakura to control the large rocks that she had just created. It was usually used for causing rocks to fall down on an opponent if they happened to be in a cave or canyon, but for a brief moment it could also be used to lift and throw them, though it was a _very_ brief moment.

The rocks shot out of the ground at Gaara and came crashing down around him. They weren't that heavy and they weren't made totally of stone, so Sakura didn't think that she'd killed him, but she wasn't totally sure that she cared in this case. Gaara wanted to kill her friends and he'd get a shot at Naruto if she lost. Protecting her friends was probably the only way reason she could justify killing someone in a tournament like this, but it was reason enough.

"Sakura-chan, look out!" Naruto yelled from the waiting area.

Sakura dove to the side as what could only be described as a "sand spike" shot through the rocks and dirt covering Gaara and nearly took her head off. More spikes branched out from other areas of the pile of rubble and then the whole thing began to shake.

Sakura reached into her weapon pouch and retrieved an exploding tag and a kunai.

The pile was almost melting now as the dirt was converted to sand until finally Gaara appeared within it. He was completely unharmed. In fact, he didn't seem to have even uncrossed his arms yet!

Sakura through the kunai with the exploding tag at him, but the sand rose up and protected him from the explosion. There wasn't even much of a scorch mark to show for the tag's efforts.

So far, Sakura's best ninjutsu had proven to be ineffective against her opponent and exploding tags didn't seem to fair much better. She was handicapped by the fact that he was apparently naturally inclined towards the earth element as well and he seemed to be a lot better at it than she was, but it took a fair number of jutsu out of play for her. She wasn't even sure if she should be using Earth jutsu to protect herself if he could just turn it into sand. She might throw up a wall to block an attack and end up giving him more sand to use against her.

That left her with taijutsu, which did not seem to be a good idea, and genjutsu.

Sakura took a deep breath and began forming another set of seals. This would use up a lot of her chakra, but if it worked, it might be enough to win. "Kokuangyou Satsu no Jutsu."

This one got Gaara's attention. She couldn't see what he was seeing, of course, but she could gage his reaction to it. It was not what Sakura imagined she'd look like when Anko had cast it on her, but he at least seemed to be confused by the sudden blackness that he probably thought had surrounded him. If she'd done it right, he would be seeing some pretty gross images of mangled people reaching out to grab hold of him and drag him farther into the darkness.

According to Yugao – who had not been in favor of casting the jutsu on Sakura to "show her how it works" – a user of Kokuangyou Satsu could then approach their victims and choke them as the hands of the images were grabbing them. The illusion masked the attack. Sakura wasn't sure that she could choke the life out of anyone, even someone like Gaara, but it would give her a chance to do some other things while she considered the idea.

Grabbing a handful of exploding tags, she pushed them together into a wad and then wrapped a small wire around them, stringing it through the rings of several kunai in the process. This little trick was a Yugao specialty. The tags would explode and send the kunai flying in all directions. With any luck, none of those directions would take them into the stands or send them after Hayate or herself, but they should be unpredictable enough that Gaara wouldn't see them coming until it was too late. Naruto seemed to think that Gaara's sand would protect him no matter what, but there had to be a limit to it.

With enough speed and no warning, even an impenetrable defense could crumble.

Her work finished, Sakura ran at Gaara, throwing the little present so that it would land just behind and to the left of him – in clear view of Hayate so that he would know what was coming.

Sakura had no intention of choking Gaara, but she was going to give him as good a thrashing as she could manage in ten seconds and then she was going to run like hell.

Gaara was obviously seeing the images grabbing at him now, because his arms had uncrossed and were reaching out to push away things that didn't exist. Most people only accepted the image for a minute before their brains started catching on to the idea that the info being relayed by the five senses was false.

Sakura pulled back her fist and drove it up at Gaara's face.

The sand was most sluggish than it had been when she threw the first kunai, but it still moved fast enough to stop her punch. She stepped back and tried a kick, but was blocked once more. A quick five punch and kick combo that Anko had taught her was just as easily defeated.

She glanced at the little bomb she'd made and then back at Gaara. She only had a few more seconds before she needed to be gone. The sand was just so fast and hard.

There was one little trick, but it was a long shot. Rin had mentioned something about pinpoint chakra control being perfect for enhancing strength far beyond what a normal ninja would be capable of. She just had to have all that chakra explode into her fist the moment she made contact.

With only three or four seconds before the bomb would go off, she swung at his head once more. The sand rose up and blocked her punch just as the chakra in her fist was pushed out.

The sand exploded, and then she felt her fist make solid contact with flesh and bone.

Gaara's eyes widened and the slightly confused look was replaced with total shock that mirrored her own.

Before either could react farther, the exploding tags went off.

Sakura threw her hands up to shield herself from what she was certain was going to be an awfully painful reminder of how stupid it was to have stayed so close to the bomb when she knew it was going to go off soon. Gaara was mostly between her and the explosion, but his body would only shield her from so much.

After a second, nothing had happened. She'd been completely missed somehow!

She looked up and found that rather than being missed, she had been saved by the fact that the sand had indeed been up to the challenge of blocking the blast and the kunai that had been sent flying at supersonic speeds.

Gaara wasn't looking at the sand, however, or in the direction of the explosion, or at her, for that matter. Instead, his hand was up at his lip where a small trickle of blood was running down his face and dripping off his chin.

"Wha-what is this?" he asked through rapid gulps. "What… what is it?"

There was almost a childlike fear in his voice as he stared in horror at the blood on his fingertips. It was like he'd never seen his own blood before.

His wide, scared eyes slowly lifted from the blood on his hand to the one who had drawn it. "You hurt me," he whispered.

Gaara looked so distraught that Sakura almost wanted to apologize for punching him. She didn't, however, and the fear left his face only to be replaced with crazed rage.

"YOU HURT ME!" he yelled as his fist lashed out, striking her across the face and sending her to the ground. His eyes narrowed and he bared his teeth as he lifted his hand over his head. A wall of sand seemed to rise up behind him, preparing to spill down and crush her.

Instinct took over as Sakura rolled back onto her hands and pushed off the ground with everything she had. The sand came down, but like a wave of water seemed to flow forward even after crashing into the ground. By the time she landed, the sand was already beneath her, waiting.

Her feet slipped as the ground shifted under her, and she had to put a hand down to try to catch herself. The sand rose up to capture her, but she reached her free hand back into her weapon pouch, retrieved a kunai, and slashed through it before it managed to claim her. Swinging down at the sand around her other hand, she was able to pull free briefly. It wasn't much, but it was enough to get another kunai in her hand so that she could try to defend herself as well as possible.

Her feet were stuck now; she didn't even have to look down to confirm it. Gaara pretty much had her and he didn't look like he was in the mood to nicely request her to give up. She didn't think she had enough chakra to use any sort of genjutsu that would get her out of this situation. Even if she managed to catch him – and he would surely be looking for it – the sand seemed to have a mind of its own. It wouldn't really help her.

Sakura knew she had to think of some move that would get her out of this trap, but she couldn't think of anything. Her friends would have to jump in and save her after all… and that would only put them in danger.

She threw one of her kunai at Gaara. It was a useless effort, of course, and the sand easily blocked it without releasing her but it was about all she could think to do.

She reached back into the weapon pouch and found one last exploding tag with two more kunai. The exploding tags had proven just as useless against Gaara as the kunai and everything else. His sand was simply too perfect of a defense. It was something of a miracle that she'd even been able to punch through it.

That thought struck her as odd for some reason. She'd punched through it with considerable difficulty and been unable to damage it at all with exploding tags, but a kunai could slice through the sand when it tried to come after her. It obviously hardened when it was protecting Gaara… but not to protect itself. It was just sand if an attack was directed at the sand itself.

Sakura pulled the kunai and the tag from her pouch. It was an idiotic plan, but it was better than all of the other options she could come up with which seemed to mostly consist of dying, begging Naruto and Sasuke to save her, or some combination of those two. At least this way she'd go out with a bang.

Sakura hoped her mother wasn't watching too closely. Much as her mother could aggravate her with the constant worrying and thinly veiled suggestions that she enter a less dangerous career field, Sakura didn't really want to upset her… usually.

She wrapped the tag around the handle of the kunai, pushing a little chakra into the seal to activate it, and then tossed it into the sand about a meter and a half in front of her. As expected, the sand didn't react to the danger it was in. It was just sand.

Sakura took a deep breath and then dropped back into the sand, not even struggling as it enveloped her.

A second later, the exploding tag did what it did best. Sakura could feel the heat from the blast wash over her and the sand rubbed her skin raw as it was propelled away from her, but it was just enough to protect her from any real damage. Even as she was sent flying with the sand, she knew that she would come down free and clear… at least for the moment.

Twisting in the air, she managed to land mostly on her feet, gasping for breath. There was no time for breathing, however, as the Gaara's sand came back after its lost captive.

Sakura hadn't really thought about what she would do after she got free. She hadn't really been convinced that her little ploy would work. Now, tired and covered in burns and scrapes, she wasn't sure what else to do. She didn't have any weapons, her jutsu were useless, and Gaara was basically unharmed. She'd done her best…

"I surrender," she whispered dejectedly.

The sand didn't stop. Gaara seemed to have calmed slightly since she first punched him, but even when he was calm Gaara was a killer. Sakura closed her eyes and waited for whatever fate would befall her.

Even with her eyes closed, she noticed the sudden darkening of the world as a shadow fell across her. It wasn't a shadow, it was several.

"The match is over," Hayate said. On either side of him stood Yugao, Naruto, Sasuke, and – strangely – Anko.

Anko looked over her shoulder at the pink-haired genin and winked. "You've gotten all dirty, little princess," she noted. "Che, don't tell anyone I tried to train you, alright? I'd hate to have my name attached to a performance like that!"

Naruto elbowed the jounin in the side and added, "You did great, Sakura-chan. Listen."

Sakura did listen. She hadn't heard it at first, what with waiting to die and all, but now what she was paying attention, she could hear clapping and cheering. Her eyes shifted up to the stands and located the general location where her mother and father had said they would be sitting. Haruno Chiru wasn't hard to spot with her distinctive pink hair. From the distance it was hard to tell, but Sakura thought she might be smiling with pride and she clapped for the performance her daughter had put on.

A little farther down and more towards the center Sakura found Kakashi and Rin. Rin apparently realized that she was being looked at because she stopped clapping for a moment and waved enthusiastically to her student. Closer to the front a loud whistle rang out that had a distinct Ino-ring to it.

Sakura let out a slow breath and smiled weakly. "That wasn't so bad."

o

o

A/N: Okay, I have to say, the new Reader Traffic feature on this site is really cool. I get hits from people in Qatar, Japan, Iran, Latvia… it's just amazingly neat to see. Well, everyone around the world (now that I know you are reading), I hope are enjoying the story, I'm happy that you've all found it.

Anyway, it's coming out a bit late, but _I_ still have an hour and a half before it officially becomes Saturday. Plenty of time if you ask me. Plus, this chapter was about 11K words and 9K of them were written just today. I think that excuses a little tardiness, don't you?

So, was that ending too cheesy? I kind of thought Sakura needed a little spotlight moment where everyone was cheering for her and she could see that all those people who trained her or were friends with her or whatever were proud of her even though she lost. Poor canonSakura never seems to win at anything. Even Sasori would have killed her and that was a two on one fight… sort of.

Well, we've gone through the end of Lee vs. Neji (setting up the Hyuuga match in the next chapter that seemed really obvious to me, but then I've known it was coming for a long, long time), all of Naruto vs. Temari, and all of Sakura vs. Gaara…. I'm beat…

Please review and let me know what you thought. Thanks for reading and have a pleasant night, day, whatever.

Kuchiyose: Kirikiri Mai – "Summoning: Spinning Whirl" or "Summoning: Slash Slash Dance." I'm assuming that "Spinning Whirl" is literal, and "Slash Slash Dance" is the translation used in the English version of the anime… though I've never seen that episode in English, so I can't really say. Regardless, this is Temari's summoning technique with which she calls Kamatari, the sickle wielding weasel.

Kaze no Yaiba – "Blade of Wind" This is the attack Baki used to kill Hayate in canon between the second and third tests. It is also the basis behind Naruto's little wind jutsu that I've been having him use for a lot of the story. As near as I can tell, it's sort of the wind version of Sasuke's Chidori "blade" which he uses against Orochimaru (and several other people in part II of the series). There is some shaping going on, but nothing on the level of Rasengan, hence the greater ease to use this.

Hachimon – "Eight Gates" or "Eight Inner Gates" The Hachimon are chakra gates within the body's chakra system. Opening them increases the flow of chakra and allows the user to surpass their physical limitations, but at the cost of damaging their own bodies. Open all eight and you are nigh invincible… but you also die at the end.

Doton: Retsudo Tenshou – "Earth Release: Split Earth Force" or "Revolving Split Earth Palm" depending on where you look. I'm not sure if this should be "Retsudo Tenshou" or "Retsudotenshou"… the second seems really long, but the first could be wrong… well, whatever, someone who actually knows Japanese feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. This technique causes the ground to break up. The Iwagakure ninja used it to kill Obito (after he'd already been crushed by rocks falling down on him) during the Kakashi Gaiden.

Doton: Iwayado Kuzushi – "Earth Release: Rock Lodging Destruction" I have to admit, this one I might be using improperly. The jutsu's only been seen once and the rocks definitely _fell_ during that instance… but I wanted a jutsu that got something into the air and I don't really know how to say "Throwing Rock Destruction" or whatever such a jutsu should be called. I don't ask this much, but _just go with it_, okay?

Kokuangyou Satsu no Jutsu – "Journey into the Darkness of Death"… I believe… The area around the affected is enveloped in darkness and they see terrifying images.


	36. Chapter 35

Chapter 35

o

When Naruto reached the top of the stairs leading into the waiting area, he found Hinata and Shikamaru wearily eyeing Gaara. The Sand genin had returned to his usual spot at the far end of the room and wasn't doing anything threatening, but with Gaara that hardly mattered.

The four of them were now the only ones left in the waiting area. Sasuke had gone with Sakura back to the infirmary to have her small wounds taken care of and Temari had still not returned after her defeat.

"The next match will be between Hyuuga Hinata and Hyuuga Neji," Hayate called out from below, signaling that the two genin only had a few minutes to show up or they would be disqualified.

Hinata turned and let out a small gasp of surprise at the sight of Naruto, her face flushing briefly.

Naruto did his best to ignore the evidence of the crush he'd so long been oblivious to. Now that he knew what he was looking at, it seemed his stupidity was being thrown in his face every time an obvious clue appeared. He let out a slow breath and asked, "Are you ready, Hinata-chan?"

She gave a very slight nod of her head. "I-I'm as r-ready as I'll ever be, Naruto-kun."

They stood there for a moment, Naruto trying to think of something more to say, Hinata looking like she wasn't sure she could step to the side to get around him. Finally, Naruto said, "He's really strong."

"Y-yes."

Hinata's was one of the few fights he could really remember from the preliminaries the first time around. It had been the first time he'd ever really seen her as someone to pay attention to. Her original match with Neji had nearly cost Hinata her life. She'd been outclassed from the beginning and taken an incredible beating at Neji's hands, but she'd gotten up over and over again. That was probably why he remembered it. There had just been no quit in Hinata, even when she was beaten almost to the point of death.

Naruto knew he probably would have been sad if she'd died back then. He certainly would have been outraged that Neji had killed a family member since he – having no family of his own – considered family to be something sacred. Perhaps he would have hurt Neji even more if Hinata had died in that preliminary match. If something happened this time, however, it would be considerably harder on him. Hinata wasn't just an acquaintance who suddenly ended up being interesting, she was a dear friend. If Neji hurt her like he had the first time…

What? Naruto tried to think of what he'd do to pay back such a thing. Could he hurt Neji above and beyond what was necessary to win a match between them? Could he _kill_ Neji over it? It was the same dilemma he'd run into when he'd tried to warn Gaara not to hurt Sakura before the previous match, he just didn't have anything that he could threaten. As much as he loved Sakura, he also loved Gaara. As much as he loved Hinata, he also loved Neji. In his mind, they were all members of his family. If he paid one back for hurting another, he was still hurting a family member. If he killed one of them for killing another, he was doubling his losses.

_'I wish the damn invasion would start already,'_ he grumbled to himself. Then, looking back up at Hinata he said, "Be careful, okay? Fight your hardest and show everyone how awesome you are, but don't… don't overdo it if you don't have to. Neji seems a bit… confused to me. Don't push him too far."

It was probably the worst advice he'd ever given anyone. Naruto could see in her eyes that she thought it sounded like he was telling her to quit or to lay down and lose. He wasn't even totally sure what he _was_ telling her. He just knew that if things got out of hand and Neji somehow killed her… it probably would be the last thing Neji ever did and he was important not only as Naruto's friend, but as a leader in the Hyuuga clan.

As Naruto stepped aside and let Hinata by, it occurred to him that she should probably hear something about that too. "Hinata-chan," he whispered, his hand lightly touching her bicep to slow her, "Neji's probably pretty important to the Branch family, right? If you're going to lead them, you'll need him also… so when you kick his ass, don't hurt him too much."

Hinata looked perplexed at his comment, but it was the best he could do. After a second, she nodded and gave him a weak smile and then headed down the stairs.

Naruto sighed loudly and shook his head as he walked over to the railing and leaned heavily against it. Down below he could see Hinata and Neji walking towards the middle of the battle grounds where Hayate was waiting for them. He wished that he hadn't known about the crush; then he wouldn't have felt so awkward about giving a little more encouragement when wishing Hinata well. The first thing he was going to do after stopping the invasion – if it happened – was get Sakura to help him figure out how to get Hinata to get over her crush and go back to just being his friend so he could talk to her without feeling like he was continuously making an ass out of himself. Sakura had always been good at the whole relationships thing; she'd know what to do for sure.

Of course, the whole mess was Sakura's fault in the first place. Perhaps she'd _helped_ enough.

"You're different than I remember from the Academy," Shikamaru remarked casually, waking Naruto from his thoughts and reminding him that he wasn't alone.

"Yeah?"

"How'd you get so strong?"

Naruto was on guard now. He hadn't thought about it until that second, but he was basically alone in a room with one of the few people he really didn't want to talk to. Shikamaru was a good friend, but he was entirely too smart for comfort. Until his death, Shikamaru had been one of his most important advisors during his time as temporary Hokage. Naruto knew plenty about his many strengths and few weaknesses. Fooling his brain was like entering an eating contest against Gamatatsu: you could win, but your chances were slim at best. Shikamaru could be lied to and tricked like anyone else, but he was exceptionally good at connecting the dots when given observable information…

And he'd been watching Naruto mop the ground with two exceptionally powerful ninja.

"Kakashi-sensei is really good teacher," Naruto replied honestly, hoping a simple explanation would tide Shikamaru over.

Shikamaru nodded. "Yeah, Asuma-sensei's pretty good too. He's kind of a hard ass, which can be troublesome, but I guess we're getting better." He looked up at the clouds and sighed thoughtfully. "Kind of weird that Sakura and Sasuke haven't improved nearly as much as you, huh?"

It was said innocently enough, but Naruto knew what his friend meant. Shikamaru didn't buy the whole "I've been working hard" bit. Naruto had obviously improved too much in too short a time for something like that.

In the end, there were only two options. He could play his hand harder and hope that he didn't inadvertently give anything more away, or…

"Well, that's because I'm actually from the future, but I got turned back into a little kid when I was sent back in time. So I know all sorts of cool jutsu that I shouldn't have learned for years and years."

…he could just tell the truth. It was so insane no one would believe him anyway.

Shikamaru snorted and shook his head. "You always were weird, you know that?"

Naruto grinned, the rest of his plan solidifying in his mind. "You haven't seen anything. I met this guy, Jiraiya, during the month since the last part of the Exam and he taught me all sorts of cool things… when he wasn't peeking at women in the bathhouses."

"Jiraiya?"

"Yeah, he said he was one of the Sennin or Sannin or something… sounded pretty big, but he was probably just trying to sound cool."

"You met Jiraiya of the Legendary Sannin?" Shikamaru asked, his eyes widening.

Naruto frowned. "Well, I don't know if he was _legendary_ or not. Is he supposed to be famous?"

Shikamaru shook his head in disbelief. "You really are a dumbass; you know that? I barely stayed awake in the Academy and even I know who Jiraiya is." With another shake of his head he turned back to the match.

Naruto was careful not to smile or let any expression other than confusion show on his face, but in his mind he was dancing a little jig. His friend might still be a little suspicious, but most of his evidence had just been given the sort of logical explanation that Shikamaru always liked to find. It probably was only going to stall the inevitable, Shikamaru and Kakashi were pretty similar in that regard, but he could deal with that problem later.

Besides, he wouldn't be able to play the dumb, weak genin against Gaara.

ooo

The polite clapping from the crowd echoed softly in the halls as Sasuke and Sakura followed the medic-nin back to the infirmary. The two genin had been walking side by side, almost perfectly in step with each other until that moment, but suddenly Sasuke was slightly behind Sakura, his steps out of sync with hers.

Sakura tried not to smile. "If you want, I can make it the rest of the way on my own," she offered. It had been nice of him to walk with her, but she knew where he'd rather be. She hadn't missed the longing in his voice when he and Naruto had talked about Neji and she'd seen the look in his eye when he saw the fight with Lee.

Sasuke might have softened a bit since they first became Team Seven, but he was still Sasuke. To him, strong people were just more interesting than weak ones… especially weak ones who were walking towards infirmaries.

"I'll walk with you," he replied with just a touch of sullenness in his voice. "They won't get to the good stuff for a couple of seconds anyway."

"He's fighting Hinata, it might…" Sakura's voice trailed off. She was going to say that the fight might not last that long, but that wasn't very fair to Hinata. Sakura was certain that Hinata had worked very hard during her month of training; she would be as ready for this fight as she could be, but Neji was just so strong.

"Naruto has faith in her," Sasuke pointed out, knowing what she'd wanted to say, "she'll last for a while."

"Naruto has faith in everyone," Sakura laughed, though quickly stopped and rubbed her hand gingerly against her protesting side. "Besides, his view of Hinata is a little… colored."

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Are you still going on about that? He made it pretty clear how he felt."

Sakura sighed. "I might have been a little off in my guess about how he felt," she admitted reluctantly, though she quickly added, "but he still acts different around her. Anyway, no matter how he feels, that Neji guy is strong. I don't know how Hinata could fight someone like him. Back in the Academy she wasn't any stronger than I was and I spent most of my time…" Her face flushed and chuckled nervously. "Well, I wasn't training very hard."

"Naruto's been training her."

Sakura's eyebrow rose slightly at Sasuke's revelation, but then she shrugged. "I know Naruto's gotten really good, but isn't that a little bit like the blind leading the blind? I mean, figuring out how to do something and teaching someone else to do it are two different things."

"It was before we went to Kogane," Sasuke added. "He's the one I saw working on the tree climbing. He was teaching her."

"_Naruto_ was doing something like that before Hinata?" Sakura asked skeptically. "His chakra control was terrible. He's got a lot of it, obviously, but that actually should hurt him when he's trying to do something delicate like tree climbing. Are you sure she wasn't teaching _him_?"

Sasuke's face made it pretty obvious that he was sure.

"Well, I guess he's always been pretty surprising," Sakura conceded. "Still, who would have thought back at the Academy that he'd ever be this good? When he was put on our team, I thought he'd be dead inside of a week."

Sasuke frowned. "I did too. He _was_ really bad in the Academy… _really_ bad."

"I guess Kakashi-sensei is a good teacher."

"He knows things Kakashi hasn't taught us," Sasuke pointed out.

"So, what? Someone else is teaching him too?"

Sasuke pursed his lips and shrugged. "I don't know. I used to wonder about it, but I kind of let it go after a while. It _is_ weird though. We'll have to ask him about it when this is all over."

Sakura smiled. "We'll bribe him with Ichiraku. A couple of bowls on us and he'll be feeling so thankful he'll tell us anything we want to know."

They reached the infirmary doors and stopped as the medic-nin continued inside. "Tonight," Sasuke decided, "after the Chuunin Exam. We'll have Kakashi-sensei come too. If Naruto does really well and makes chuunin, we'll say it's a celebratory dinner; if he loses or doesn't get the promotion, then it's a conciliatory meal. He'll go for it either way."

Sakura nodded and pushed open the door. "It would be nice to hear how he's doing it. If you improved at the pace he did, they'd make you Hokage by the end of the year!" Sakura did her best not to chuckle at her own joke since she didn't want to hurt herself again, and Sasuke smiled a little at the idea of getting that strong that fast.

"Sakura-chan!" Lee called out from within the room.

Sakura's eyes widened and she tried to stop in her tracks but was run into from behind by Sasuke, pushing her forward into the room. After a moment of looking around awkwardly, Sakura tried to smile politely. "Um, hi."

"Iyashi-san told me that you were incredible in your match," Lee gushed. "Truly the power of youth has filled your team!"

Sakura bit her lip and glanced at Sasuke who had a very peculiar expression on his face. "Oh, uh, thanks."

Another awkward silence filled the room as Lee continued to smile at them and Sakura and Sasuke continued to wonder how they should react to him. Finally, the medic-nin, whose name was apparently Iyashi, asked Sakura to get up on one of the beds so he could exam her for any internal injuries and begin treating those that could be seen.

"I'm going to go watch the match," Sasuke whispered as Sakura walked past him, "unless you want me to stay." He gave Lee another strange look.

"I'll be fine, I'm sure," Sakura told him with a smile. "Go make sure Naruto doesn't do anything too stupid."

Sasuke nodded and headed for the door, but before he was out of the room, Lee called out. "Sasuke-kun?"

Sasuke paused and looked back at the peculiar genin.

Lee's smile grew a little larger. "Perhaps after I am recovered, we can have another match."

An almost feral grin spread across Sasuke's face. "I'll be looking forward to it."

ooo

Pale white eyes met pale white eyes as Hinata made her way from the stairs to the center of the battle grounds where Neji and Hayate were waiting for her. After only a second, Hinata lowered her gaze. Neji was mildly impressed that she managed to hold his eyes for as long as she had.

He watched her carefully, taking in every movement of her body and picking out all of the little details that most non-Hyuuga would miss. She was scared, just as he knew she would be.

He'd thought long and hard about what he'd say to her when they got to this point because he'd been certain that they would eventually end up like this. Even as she approached, he wasn't sure what he would say when he opened his mouth. She had no business being matched up against him. Telling her that would only be stating the obvious, but perhaps with someone like Hinata, the obvious needed to be stated every once in a while.

It had been a cruel twist of fate that had forced her to sit and watch as he showed how powerful he was against Lee, knowing that she'd have to face him next. A part of him wondered why she hadn't just forfeited the match from the waiting room rather than walking all the way out here.

Perhaps she had, but no one could hear her tiny voice from so far away.

Or maybe she thought that his injuries would even the playing field. If that was the case, there might be a grain of truth to what she was thinking. He _was_ in a fair amount of pain. Walking on his broken leg had been considerably more difficult once the adrenaline from his fight with Lee wore off. The medic-nin had done what they could, but healing bones took more time than they had… unless they'd held back to give the Main House heiress a little more of an edge.

Hinata reached him and was given just a few seconds to ready herself before Hayate coughed and said, "Begin!"

Neither Hyuuga moved for a long moment, and then Neji said, "Hinata-sama, before we start, I must say something." He gave her a chance to look up at him, but when she didn't take it he pressed forward. "You are not cut out to be a shinobi, we both know it. You didn't even train with a single Hyuuga instructor during this last month. Nothing you've done will have changed the difference between us, a difference that you are perfectly aware of. For your own sake: forfeit, now."

Hinata swallowed hard and then whispered, "Y-you have n-not seen what… what I've done d-during this last m-month. You don't know h-how ready I am."

"We both know who you are, Hinata-sama. You try to be kind and soft, you shy away from conflict, and you agree with others for the sake of peace and harmony… these are not the qualities of a shinobi." Neji stared at her for a moment longer and then shook his head. "You don't even believe in yourself. I've been aware of your sense of inferiority since almost the first day we met, nothing has changed. Nothing will change. Please, just accept your fate and forfeit. It will be better for you to remain a genin. You don't want anything more anyway."

Hinata shook her head. "N-no," she whispered, "I w-will change… I _have_ changed. I am n-not the s-same person you remember."

Neji shook his head. "It is worse than I thought. Perhaps if you could have admitted what we both know to be the truth… but instead you show yourself to be nothing more than a spoiled brat, the pampered heir of the Main House. People cannot change themselves!"

Again she shook her head. "No, Neji-nii-san, you… you are m-mistaken. P-people can change."

"Really?" Neji asked with a mocking laugh. "Tell me, can a person change his face? Can he become more handsome if he is born ugly? Can he become smarter if he is born with an inferior mind? No. Looks, brains, potential, personality… we are born with these things, we are judged by these things, and we judge others by these things. They are a fate we are born with, as unchangeable as the fact that one day we are all fated to die… just as unchangeable as the fact that I was born into the Branch House and you were born into the Main House."

Once more she shook her head. "I…I'm sorry, but y-you are wrong. Th-there are some things we must l-live with, but we can s-still change. W-we can study, we can train… we can find f-friends who help us see our w-worth. Perhaps we can't ch-change which family w-we were born into, but w-we can change what it means to be a part of that f-family."

Neji shook his head. She was even more of a pampered child than he'd realized. A large part of him actually hoped that she would continue to refuse to forfeit now. Taking away Lee's hope had been an unpleasant necessity, this would be a pleasure. Apparently fate knew what it was doing as it pushed the two of them to this point.

He brought his hands up and formed the activation seal. "Byakugan!"

The veins around his eyes bulged as his kekkei genkai activated. He stared long and hard at her with those eyes that others always thought could stare right into a person's soul. The Byakugan couldn't quite accomplish that feat, but the insight that it offered came close enough. He could see the smallest movement, the changes in the flow of her chakra; everything he needed to read her like a book… and what he found was surprising.

Hinata wasn't as nervous as he'd expected her to be. There was a tiny tremble in her fingertips, but it wasn't as big as it should have been. Her flow of chakra was smooth and calm, as was her breathing. Everything he saw led him to one inescapable conclusion: Hinata would not forfeit.

"I am not responsible for what happens to you," he offered as a final warning.

Hinata's hand came up as she activated her own Byakugan. "I know."

"If you plan on activating the seal, anyone watching will know about the duplicity of the Main House," Neji sneered as he brought his hands up into the classic Juuken starting position, his right hand at his side, his left arm up with his palm pointing at her.

"I will never do that," Hinata replied as her left hand mimicked his; her right hand, however, did not move towards her side, but rose up behind her, "not to you nor to anyone else. Ever."

Neji frowned at the strange quirk in her form, but didn't bother to comment on it. It didn't matter what strange thing she decided to do, she was weaker than him so it was her fate to lose. Fate was fate.

The two Hyuuga moved at almost the exact same moment.

ooo

"What is she doing, father?" Hyuuga Hanabi asked as she noticed her older sister's form. "That's not Juuken."

Hiashi did not answer as he watched his daughter prepare to fight his nephew. Hinata's movements were familiar, but strange at the same time. He could see that what she was doing was based off of Juuken, but the differences were clearly there as well. Perhaps this was where the sudden changes in her matches with Hanabi were coming from. The two of them hadn't been forced to fight each other since just before the Chuunin Exam, but even then Hinata had been making strange movements during her training. There had been complaints from her teachers that Yuhi Kurenai's taijutsu was beginning to corrupt Hinata's Juuken, but that obviously wasn't the case.

This was something completely different from an accidental switching between one form and another. This was a whole new form.

When he'd seen Neji use Kaiten, Hiashi had been amazed. For a Branch member to learn such a closely guarded secret all on his own was unheard of. In that one moment, it seemed that Neji had completely surpassed all of his peers from the Main House. Then he'd taken it a step farther when he'd shown that he was also capable of performing Hakke Rokujuuyon Shou.

Hiashi almost wished Hinata would have taken Neji's advice and forfeited, anything would have been better than having the Main House heir completely crushed by a Branch House member. Tensions were high in the family anyway; Hinata being defeated by Neji could prove explosive.

So what was she doing? What were these movements?

"What is Hinata-nee-san doing?" Hanabi asked again. "That's not Juuken. She's going to be killed if she fights like that."

Hiashi shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted. "When this is over, I will speak to her."

ooo

Neji moved inside of Hinata's defenses with ease, bringing his right hand up to strike her in the stomach. Hinata's back hand came up as she turned gracefully, sweeping his strike away as she spun easily away. Her turn took her to his back side, similar to the way he'd positioned himself at the end of his fight with Lee. The similarity struck him quickly enough that he wasn't surprised when he saw her left hand reach back in an attempt to land a blow to his back.

Neji dove forward to evade the attack, his leg protesting the start of the movement and his ribs crying out as he rolled on them. The pain was nearly blinding and sucked the breath from his lungs. As he got back to his feet and turned to face Hinata, he was hit with the last thing he could have expected.

Kunai would have made sense, a Juuken strike would have been logical if she was quick enough on her feet to reach him during his roll, but what he got instead was a blast of water to the chest.

The ninjutsu wasn't exceptionally powerful, but it had enough force behind it to send him flying through the air for a moment before crashing painfully to the ground again. Even as he tried to wrap his brain around the idea of a Hyuuga using elemental ninjutsu – or ninjutsu at all for that matter – he heard the cracking sound of bones breaking in his chest. His ribs were not as healed as he'd thought they would be. Against a Juuken user, it shouldn't have been much of a problem because Juuken didn't attack bones, but Hinata wasn't playing by those rules apparently.

Slowly Neji climbed to his feet and turned to face Hinata. She was still standing in the same place she'd been when she used the ninjutsu. There was plenty of time for her to press her advantage, but she hadn't moved. "So that's your plan? Pretend to use some strange taijutsu style and then attack me with ninjutsu?" Neji shook his head, "I stand corrected. You can change… you can become even more pathetic than you were before. Hyuuga have no need of such ridiculous tricks."

Hinata brought her hands back up into the strange stance. She didn't seem to have a response to his insult, or perhaps she simply realized the truth of his words.

Neji didn't care; he was going to reveal her fate to her right now. With a burst of speed he rushed at her, hands already moving to strike her. She was caught off guard by his speed and took a shot to the stomach, but even as she doubled over in pain, her left hand came down on his thigh pushing chakra into the coil located there while her right tried to find his still extended arm.

With his injuries, Neji didn't have time to try to move or block. Instead he pushed chakra out of his tenketsu and spun in a tight circle. The Kaiten erupted from so close, he knew there was a chance that he could do some serious damage to Hinata, but that was not his concern. She'd chosen to enter the fight; if she died it was on her own head.

Hinata did not die, but it took her a long time to finally get back up. Had she not managed to injure the muscles in Neji's already broken leg, he probably would have finished her off before she made it to her feet.

"You should have stayed down," Neji told her as they squared off again.

"If you want me to stay down, you'll have to beat me unconscious or kill me, brother," Hinata replied firmly and Neji could see that she meant it. "I don't go back on my word; that is my ninja way."

"As you wish."

He came at her again, hobbled but still fast enough to keep the distance close so he could deal out plenty of damage. It was a good plan that had given him lots of success in the past, but for some reason it didn't seem to work as well as it normally did. Perhaps it was his injuries, perhaps it was because he was more tired than he realized after his fight with Lee, but Neji suddenly found it extremely difficult to hit Hinata. Her new style of taijutsu was clearly some version of Juuken, or at least it seemed to resemble Juuken as often as not.

Whatever it was, it seemed to work. It ironed out areas of Juuken that Neji had always found annoying. Little wasted motions from the ancient style were eliminated in annoyingly brilliant ways and new motions that Neji had never even considered made her exceptionally hard to hit while occasionally leaving him defenseless to her strikes.

Perhaps the worst part was that Neji suspected that Hinata was really, really terrible at this new form. The unfamiliarity of the motions made it harder to predict her and he had to get over preconceived expectations of how she would fight, but he could see that there were times she was simply making things up on the fly or suddenly finding herself unsure of how to react to his attacks. The overall feeling that Neji received was that this form was something fairly new to her.

If he had been completely healthy, he probably would have mopped the floor with her.

The two of them traded blow for blow, pain for pain. Standing as close to toe-to-toe as two martial artists possibly could, Hinata twisted and bent and stuck like a snake while Neji used a more straight forward attack to retaliate. Every once in a while, Hinata would land a strike that left Neji winded, giving her time to leap back and use ninjutsu on him. In fact, it seemed like the new form actually encouraged her to do so as her hands were often close together while she moved and flowed. Her jutsu repertoire, like her taijutsu proficiency, was woefully lacking, but he lacked the strength to make her pay for it.

Neji had never heard of a Hyuuga using ninjutsu. They molded chakra, of course, as that was the basis of a lot of the more advanced Juuken abilities, but elemental ninjutsu was unheard of within the clan. In many ways, the use of ninjutsu was looked down upon by the clan, as if it was in some ways brutish. Neji had heard vague explanations that seemed to be based upon the idea that chakra's natural state in a person was elementally neutral. One didn't push out water-chakra or fire-chakra, it took the formation of seals to force the chakra into an elemental class.

It smacked of some old religion that was no longer specifically followed, but whose traditions were so powerfully ingrained into the clan's life that they refused to perish with the religion itself.

For a Hyuuga heiress to be using such a thing would be considered blasphemy, even if no one cared about the thing being blasphemed.

Hinata landed another attack and instantly jumped back, already forming seals in the air. "Suiton: Mizzu Rappa!"

Neji tensed, but for some reason the water was not aimed at him. Instead, the great spout that shot from her mouth was aimed over his head. Whatever the reason, she hadn't missed on accident, so Neji reached into the pouch on his back hip and drew three kunai which he quickly fired at Hinata.

Hinata apparently wasn't expecting to be attacked while they were farther apart from each other because she took one to the leg as she dove out of the way; her fingers forming still more seals.

"Suiton: Bakufu no Jutsu!"

The water in the air changed directions instantly, crashing down on Neji with the force of the waterfall for which the jutsu was named. Neji's left foot planted as he went into his Kaiten spin, but after all of the damage done to it during the fight and the one that preceded it, he didn't have the strength to complete more than one spin. A small whimper of a vortex appeared, pushing away the initial thrust of the water, but that was all he managed. The rest of the waterfall slammed into him, knocking him off his feet as he was slammed to the ground.

Once again, Hinata rose to her feet. She pulled the kunai from her thigh and tossed it away as she limped towards Neji.

Neji tried to get up, but couldn't. He was just too hurt and too tired. All he could really manage to do was look up at the sky, watching the birds soaring peacefully amongst the clouds. Then Hinata came into view, ruining the picture.

"Fate favors the Main House again," he whispered with a derisive chuckle. "I should have seen it coming. A bye into the second round, my injuries against that fool, not having enough time to heal… it was all a set up for this: the fate of a Branch member. I could never have risen above what I already was…" He sighed and closed his eyes. "With these eyes, I should have seen it."

"You're wrong, Neji-nii-san," Hinata replied softly. My eyes are not as good as yours, but I can see things as well. I see that it is you who is suffering within our family's destiny. The weight of the Branch family and Main family conflict is written plainly on your face… as is the weight of your hatred. Your father died in my father's place because of me." She lowered her head, took a deep breath, and then whispered, "You are right to hate us. A child who cannot hate those responsible for his beloved father's death would be a monster… and you are not a monster, my brother."

She looked over at Hayate who seemed to be trying to decide if Neji was really beaten or simply luring Hinata in. After Lee's near revival, nothing was out of the question. "Hayate-san, I wish to forfeit."

Neji's eyes opened and his lips twisted into a scowl. "You think giving me a victory will make me happy?"

Hinata looked genuinely surprised at the question. "No, Neji-nii-san, I don't think that it will make you happy at all. The only thing that will make you happy is having your father returned to you. If it were in my power to give this to you, I would, even if it cost me my life. The return of your father would be far better for our clan than I am. I am giving you this victory simply to defy fate. Fate decreed that you would fight Lee-kun and that I would be given a free pass into the next round. Fate decreed that you would be too tired and injured to completely show the difference between our abilities. Fate set me up to win, but I do not believe in fate. And so, I choose to not accept what fate set before me."

She smiled for a moment, as a happy thought drifted through her mind. Neji couldn't guess what that happy thought might be, but he didn't see anything happy about what was happening in _this_ moment.

"If a person works hard enough," Hinata continued, "they can overcome anything. Naruto-kun taught me that. Now my hard work shall be to overcome whatever consequences await me after I am defeated by an injured, tired Branch member, but I think that I can bear it. The wait of the clan's future may be on my shoulders, but I have found friends who will help me carry it, should I succeed my father some day, just like I will help them carry their burdens. It is not fate, it is simply a choice. G-good luck in your next match, N-neji-nii-san."

Neji tightened his jaw and rolled up to a sitting position before pushing himself to his feet. There was no noise from the crowd; they almost seemed to be holding their breath in anticipation of what would come next. Probably they didn't even realize that the match was over. Hinata, as usual, spoke so quietly that Neji doubted anyone had even heard her except for Hayate.

"Winner: Hyuuga Ne—"

"I don't want it!" Neji growled. "I'm done."

Hayate's eyes widened in surprise. "But, you've advanced to the finals."

Neji's eyes shifted towards the jounin as he scowled. "Do I look like I can fight another match?" he asked. Turning back to Hinata he added, "This was my finals, I don't care about those other two… this was enough."

He stared at Hinata for a long moment, not sure what to say, not even sure what he was feeling. She'd beaten him. It might be a victory that should receive an asterisk next to it due to his injuries, but he'd lost none-the-less. She was weaker than him, but she'd won. She was in a higher social standing than him, but she'd given him the victory and freely admitted that he was superior. She was arguably one of the weakest members of the Main House and she'd shown up with a strange new taijutsu style that seemed to be Juuken the way Neji thought it should be done. It took true genius to create something like that… and only hard work would allow someone to learn a new style in a month after having the old style hammered into her head for her whole life.

Hinata's eyes met his briefly and then looked down at the ground as she bit her lip. She took a deep breath, glanced up into the stands and then did just about the one thing Neji would never have expected.

She bowed.

Not the sort of polite bow that a person would give new acquaintance or the slightly more formal bow that one would give an older family member or teacher. No, Hinata bowed at the waist until her upper body was parallel to the ground.

Neji didn't have the historical records to prove it, but he was absolutely certain that no Main House member, let alone the clan heir, had _ever_ bowed like that to a Branch member. Such an act was…

He wasn't sure what it was, but Hinata was sure to get in trouble for it. Some council member would find such behavior to be unacceptable. She would be punished, perhaps even harshly. Forfeiting the match was one thing; she'd get in trouble, but everyone knew that she was physically weaker than him. This was something else. What made it even worse was the fact that it was in a very public setting where the whole village could see the Hyuuga heiress humbling herself before her social inferior.

Neji didn't quite know what came over him, but suddenly he found himself returning the bow as best he could. He wasn't forgiving her family for all of their pompousness and especially wasn't forgiving them for the death of his father, but he wouldn't let Hinata suffer the fate that she was strangely setting herself up for.

In a way, he supposed, he was defying that fate and choosing another.

It was a very strange feeling indeed.

ooo

Naruto couldn't keep the beaming smile off of his face even as Sasuke sighed and said, "That was anticlimactic."

"It was the best possible ending I've ever seen," Naruto retorted, still smiling.

"They both gave up," Sasuke shot back. "It wasn't even that good of a fight."

Naruto's smile somehow grew larger. "Sometimes, the fight isn't as important as what comes out of it."

"You sound like Asuma-sensei," Shikamaru informed Naruto with a sigh. "Anyway don't get so excited, it just means that you have to fight sooner and there's no chance of you getting a bye while Gaara fights someone else. You two are the only ones left in the finals now."

Naruto let his eyes drift over to the other side of the room where he found Gaara staring at him, a rather unpleasant smile on his lips. The blond shrugged. "That's not a bad thing either."

Shikamaru shook his head. "You really are a weird one."

"The final match of the test will be between Uzumaki Naruto of Konohagakure and Gaara of Sunagakure," Hayate called out in a loud voice.

Naruto looked at Gaara again and said, "That's our call."

Gaara was already walking towards the stairs. "I'm going to kill you."

Naruto watched him go and sighed. "He has a one track mind, doesn't he?"

"Be careful out there," Sasuke said as Naruto started to leave.

The blond nodded confidently. "Don't worry, it'll be fine." When he reached the stairs he paused and said, "Do me a favor, go make sure Sakura-chan is safe, will you? And if anything… weird… happens, go meet up with Kakashi-sensei."

Sasuke and Shikamaru exchanged confused looks and then turned back to ask Naruto what he was talking about, but the blond was already heading down the stairs.

"Is he like that all the time?" Shikamaru asked.

"Not always," Sasuke replied. "Usually he's a little weirder."

"Ah, well, remind me not to complain about having Ino on my team anymore."

ooo

In a thick forest a man walked easily along the long branch of a tall tree and knelt next to his commander.

"Everyone is ready and waiting," he reported dutifully.

"Good," the older ninja replied as his dark eyes scanned the horizon for any sign of movement from their enemies. "We still have a little while, but it won't be long now. We'll start just before sunset."

"This whole plan seems a bit… dodgy, if you don't mind me saying."

The older ninja grinned. "I don't mind, but don't let any of the higher ups hear you talk like that. You know where these orders came from… not the sort of person you should be questioning."

"Was it really _him_ though?"

"They say it was; who are we to question them?"

"It just seems weird, is all. We're risking a lot on this plan. I don't see him putting in as much effort."

"I doubt we'd be out here if we were the only ones who were going to be in on this. Don't worry, there's a deeper play going on, it'll be worth it."

The younger ninja nodded reluctantly. "An hour before sunset then?"

"That's right"

"I can't wait."

The older ninja nodded knowingly. "None of us can."

ooo

Naruto stood calmly in front of Gaara, feeling the waves of killer intent rolling off of his friend and washing over him. This would be one of the hardest things he'd tried to do in a long, long time. Beating Gaara would be simple, of course, but totally changing the way Gaara saw the world in the span of one fight? That felt nearly impossible.

He had to try, though. He couldn't leave Gaara like this. His friend had spent years in the darkness, now it was time to bring in some light. Not only was it important for Gaara's sake – though that was reason enough for Naruto to risk his life on this little mission – but Suna would need the sort of leader that Gaara could become. Naruto didn't know much about Gaara's father, but plenty of citizens of Suna had mentioned how much better a Kazekage Gaara was. All those people were counting on Naruto's efforts as well, even if they didn't know it.

For the first time in a while, Naruto didn't have the question of whether or not Orochimaru would attack. He wasn't wondering if he'd done enough to change Sasuke. He didn't even care about what was going on with Hinata and Neji back in the infirmary. None of that mattered now that Gaara was in front of him with no distractions, no excuses, and no where to run. He would either save his friend in the next few minutes or hours or he would lose his best shot… maybe his only shot.

He didn't want to think of what the world would be like if he failed.

Hayate held up his hand and then stepped back and said, "Begin!"

o

o

A/N: Whoa, late late late… and short to boot! And what's worse, I have to tell you all that I won't be updating next week because of the unfortunate combination of family business and first week of school. I'll definitely be back the following week, but there's just no way I could write a chapter in the time I'll have free during this next week.

Anyway, the problems with this chapter just couldn't be helped (well the length couldn't be). I only had one fight to stick in and it was a more character development centered one rather than one that I could weave around some sort of cool jutsu. With Neji injured and Hinata using something that she's still not great at, the cool factor was low. Also, I didn't want Naruto's fight to be in the same chapter as it seemed to create confusion over which round all of these fights were taking place during.

Speaking of the fighting, I'm not super psyched about how it went here. I mean, I liked the end, but the fighting itself seemed to be lacking something… it was kind of a let down for me and I wrote it! Hmm, I might have to give it some thought and find a few areas to add some "cool" details, but I'm too tired right now. If it was boring, I apologize (I know, I know, I do that all the time, it's just in my nature). I'm pretty excited about the Naruto-Gaara fight. Sand is always cool and Naruto has a nice large jutsu repertoire to make things interesting. Hyuuga's just kind of stand and swing at each other… not so fun.

Well, have a good two weeks. See you in September.

Suiton: Mizzu Rappa – "Water Release: Chaos Wave" This is the one jutsu the non-Pein version of Yahiko was ever seen doing during the flashback to Jiraiya's younger days. I've borrowed it in this chapter and the one before it because I figured that Jiraiya obviously taught it to Yahiko and thus could have taught it to Naruto (who could pass it on to Hinata during the month of training) and because it is one of the few Water ninjutsu that doesn't seem to require a source of water nearby as you shoot it out of your mouth kind of like Sasuke's Great Fireball technique.

Suiton: Bakufu no Jutsu – "Water Release: Waterfall Technique" Sort of a weaker variation of Daibakufu no Jutsu (_Great_ Waterfall Technique), which is an A-rank jutsu. I couldn't see Hinata picking up something that complex in a month, but a weaker C-ranked version of it? Sure.


	37. Chapter 36

Chapter 34

Chapter 36

o

Infirmaries, like hospitals, are generally quiet places. When there are a lot of patients and medic-nin are forced to move quickly from one to the next, they can get noisy as orders are barked out and supplies are rushed to and fro, but by and large things are kept quiet so that those who are injured can rest and heal.

For this reason, Hyuuga Hiashi was a little surprised to hear something that sounded suspiciously like yelling coming from inside the infirmary as he reached the doors.

The noise led to the strange scene he found within being far less of a surprise than it might otherwise have been. Neji's teammate, Rock Lee, was standing on his bed, still wrapped in bandages, and appeared to be trying to demonstrate some sort of taijutsu maneuver to Haruno Sakura who was on a bed at the far side of the room. Two medic-nin were attempting – and having little success – to get him to lie back down. Sakura seemed to be trying to decide if she wanted to look as interested as she apparently felt or allow the laughter that was causing her chest to shake to show on her face. Next to her, Hinata was smiling politely and trying to softly tell Lee that he should be resting so his injuries could heal, though no one seemed to be hearing her over Lee's boisterous explanation of how to perform the advanced taijutsu maneuver.

On the bed closest to the door, Neji was being treated by another medic-nin, though his eyes had been on Hinata until he spotted Hiashi enter the room.

The change on the boy's face was instantaneous, though he did an admirable job hiding his hatred.

Hiashi cleared his throat and the room fell silent. Even Lee was subdued by the small noise.

The three medic-nin were quick to bow. "What can we do for you, Hyuuga-sama?" one asked.

Hiashi's stern eyes swept around the room and then he said, "I wish to speak with Neji and Hinata… alone. Are the others able to move?"

"It will not be a problem for any of them," the medic-nin quickly replied.

"It won't take long," Hiashi told them with a small bow of thanks.

Lee and Sakura quickly hopped off their beds and started to follow the three medic-nin out the door, but they froze in the tracks as Neji said, "Stop."

Every eye in the room turned towards the dark-haired boy as he painfully pushed himself up into a sitting position and swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Let them stay."

"Neji-kun, it is not a big deal," Lee said with a smile. "Sakura-chan would probably like to go and see her teammate's fight anyway."

"Go if you want, but don't leave because of _him_," Neji replied calmly. "If he has something to say, he can say it in front of you. This family hides too many demons the way it is."

Sakura and Lee looked at Hiashi questioningly, waiting for a second order to leave. He was certain that if he said the word, they would be out the door before Neji could object again. The Hyuuga did not like to air grievances in public; it was not good for the harmony of the house… but perhaps Neji wasn't entirely wrong.

"F-father," Hinata said quietly from her bed, "perhaps you sh-should tell Neji-nii-san what you wish to say… s-so that he can decide if it is something he wants said in front of friends."

Hiashi's eyes turned towards his oldest daughter and she instantly shifted her eyes towards the ground. He stared at her calmly for a moment, noting the changes that had come over her during the past few months. Her eyes still fell when he looked at her, but she no longer seemed to shrink the way she had before graduating from the Academy.

Hinata had almost never cried as a baby. If her feeding time was missed, she would make a soft mewing noise, but never scream. Hiashi had thought that it was a sign of her bravery and confidence, but as she'd grown the truth had been quickly apparent. Hinata was simply timid, shy, and quiet. Even as a baby, she'd apparently not wanted to disturb anyone with her nourishment needs. Hyuuga were supposed to be quiet, they were supposed to be at peace, but they were not supposed to be timid.

As she'd grown, he'd seen to it that she never heard a word of true praise from him or her instructors. The only Hyuuga who had ever given her a kind word had been her mother and tragedy had seen to it that even those words were silenced. He'd thought that she would push herself harder and harder to earn his praise. He'd thought that her lack of natural talent would be eclipsed by her desire to see him smile in admiration at her work.

He'd been wrong.

Rather than growing stronger and struggling to overcome her deficiencies, she'd become more timid.

As a father, he'd been heartbroken. As the leader of the Hyuuga clan he'd been forced to turn his attention to his more talented child. The Hyuuga had to have an heir for the next generation, if it couldn't be Hinata, it _had_ to be Hanabi. Hinata was, in the eyes of the clan, nearly useless. Much as he loved his daughter, he couldn't forsake his duty to the clan for her.

Perhaps he'd been wrong again.

In the past month, perhaps two months even, Hinata had grown by leaps and bounds. Hiashi didn't know what had caused it, but he was seeing the results of it even now. Hinata was looking at the ground rather than meeting his eyes, but she wasn't shrinking down into her jacket, or holding her hands up in front of herself. On top of that, she'd offered a suggestion without being asked. In nearly thirteen years of life, Hinata had never done that in front of him.

"Your suggestion is wise," Hiashi said softly. Even with her head tilted slightly forward so she could look at the ground, he could see Hinata's eyes widen and heard the small gasp that slipped through her lips. He turned back to Neji and said, "This concerns your father… and the truth behind his death."

Lee and Sakura's heads snapped to the side as they stared at Neji, seeming to beg him with their eyes to let them leave. Some things were too private to be discussed amongst those who weren't family.

Neji's face was blank as he looked back at them and said, "You don't have to leave unless you want to."

"This really isn't my business," Sakura said quickly, "and Naruto's fight will be starting soon." She bowed to Hiashi and practically fled from the room.

Lee was quiet for a moment longer and then said, "Neji-kun, this is important for you. I'll—"

"Stay," Neji whispered. "Fate made you my teammate, but… but I chose you as my friend. Stay."

The smile that split Lee's face seemed to chase any hint of a shadow from the room. "The powers of youth—"

"But stay quiet," Neji added quickly.

Lee paused in mid exclamation, his mouth slightly open, his smile still in place, and his right hand moving to give Neji a big thumbs up. He held that pose for a brief second and then dropped his hand as his smile became slightly more subdued. "Of course, Neji-kun."

Hiashi watched the interacting with mild interest as he judged his nephew's reasoning. There was a chance that Neji really did want his friend to be with him during such a conversation, but it seemed even more likely that he was trying to goad Hiashi into refusing his terms.

Hiashi did _not_ want to have this conversation in front of outsiders, but more than that, he _did_ want to have the conversation. He owed Hizashi a debt that couldn't be repaid and couldn't be set aside because of the pettiness of a young man who didn't understand the real reason behind his rage.

"On that day," Hiashi said softly, closing his eyes and bowing his head slightly, "I fully intended to die."

It would not be an easy conversation, but it was one that had been put off for far too long. He would do what needed to be done to convince Neji of the truthfulness of the story, regardless of what it took. Hizashi had died a hero, not a victim, and his son needed to know that. If it took humbling and shaming himself in front of an outsider to get the point across, Hiashi would do it.

And when he was done with that, he would ask his daughter about her new taijutsu style. He'd been wrong about many things in his life, and the two people most injured by those wrongs were sitting in the room staring at him. Perhaps by the time he walked out those doors, some of those wrongs would be addressed, if not fixed.

ooo

When had Gaara changed? Was it immediately after he'd been beaten during the first invasion of Konoha? Was it during the time between that defeat and Sasuke's defection? Had his family or some of the ninja in Sunagakure had anything to do with it? Or had the bulk of the change occurred sometime after the failed mission to keep Sasuke from defecting?

Naruto had never asked Gaara about these things in his original timeline, and he'd never regretted it until now. It hadn't seemed relevant in the future, but now that information might be invaluable. He had to save his friend, but he still wasn't completely sure how to go about doing it.

Beyond that issue he still couldn't tell if Orochimaru's attack was coming. Kabuto was in the hospital, and the ninja from Suna weren't acting remotely suspicious, but was that just a ploy or were things really that different in this reality?

Naruto sighed and turned his full attention to the red haired genin standing across from him. "You don't seem to be in a hurry to start this," he noted as he held Gaara's cold gaze.

The cork popped out of the gourd strapped to Gaara's back and flew over Naruto's shoulder, but that was the only answer Gaara seemed inclined to give at the moment.

"Have you figured out what I am yet?" Naruto asked quietly, hoping to delay the fight until he had more of a plan than 'keep punching until Gaara realizes the value of friendship and become a good guy again.' Of course, so far as Naruto could remember, that was basically the plan the first time around and things had worked out okay. Perhaps that was really all there was to it.

"Your power is like mine," Gaara replied with an unsettling grin. "When I kill you and add your power to my own, I'll be twice as strong."

Naruto's head bounced slightly from side to side as he weighed the answer. "Not quite what I was going for, but close enough, I guess." He smiled at his potential future friend and said, "So you know that we're the same."

"No," Gaara replied with a shake of his head, "we aren't the same. You're nothing but a corpse that is walking around… and I'm the one who's going to bury you!"

Gaara clapped his hands together and then his fingers began to form seals. Boar, Monkey, Rat, Horse, Monkey, Horse, Ram, Horse, and then he clapped again as sand rose out of the ground as his feet with such force that his hair and clothes began to whip about in the wind created by the jutsu.

Naruto had seen Ryuusa Bakuryuu enough to know what to expect, but this would be the first time it had actually been used against him. This one was smaller than other times it had been used, probably because using it at full power would have swamped the entire arena in sand. Weakened though it might be, it would still be enough to do away with him if he didn't act fast. As the massive wall of sand slammed down on him, he brought his hand up to his mouth and then vanished under the wave.

The sand enveloped the blond, forming a large hill above where he'd been standing. Gaara slowly let out a deep breath, slightly winded from having used such a large jutsu. He'd only recently developed it and still had trouble controlling such a large amount of sand. Not that it mattered, the weight of that much sand would easily have been enough to crush Naruto unless he escaped underground and even then Gaara would have him at a disadvantage when he tried to emerge.

For a moment, nothing happened and it almost looked like the fight was already over, but then the hill of sand expanded as if a massive air bubble had just been released within it. A second later, the hill exploded as a large, dark object leapt into the air. As it rose above the cloud of sand, the object revealed itself to be a huge, orange colored toad. It landed with a plop that shook the ground under Gaara's feet and seemed to almost smile at the red-haired genin before spitting something out of its mouth.

"Not good enough!" Naruto called out as he flipped in the air and threw a kunai at Gaara.

Sand shot out of Gaara's gourd, part of it moving to block the kunai while the rest caught Naruto in midair and crushed him.

"Still not good enough!" Naruto yelled as smoke from the shadow clone seeped out of the sand while he leaped from the toad's mouth. The toad disappeared as soon as the blond's feet hit the ground, vanishing in a cloud of smoke while Naruto charged headlong at his opponent.

Gaara turned, bring his hand up as the sand moved to intercept the new attack. It formed a protective shell between the two genin, but Naruto's fist crashed through it and connected solidly with Gaara's face. The force of the blow lifted Gaara off his feet and sent him flying through the air.

The sand quickly moved away from Naruto and caught Gaara before he hit the ground, gently setting him down.

Naruto smiled. "Getting hit doesn't seem to surprise you anymore. I guess you're learning."

Gaara rubbed his thumb across his lower lip, wiping it clean of blood, and then spit as he glared at the blond and a fresh wave of killer intent flowed out of him. He lifted his arm, his hand flexed, and the sand began to rise once more.

Naruto shook his head. "Fine a new trick." His fingers flashed through a long series of seals while the sand rose higher and higher. Then he lifted his own hands, palms down, and jerked them towards the ground.

It didn't look quite as impressive as the massive wave of sand, but a wave of air could be just as powerful in the right hands. Naruto's spiky hair laid flat against his head and the lose material on his clothes flapped wildly as a huge gust of wind crashed down on the arena floor. The sand that had been rising so ominously was slammed to the ground instantly, not even a speck of dust seemed to remain in the air, and Gaara was driven to his knees by the sudden increase in pressure.

As the wind died down, Gaara looked up at Naruto, his eyes wide in shock for the first time since the fight began. Naruto smiled.

He brought his hands in close to his chest, forming a few more seals and then took an almost skipping step forward as his hands drifted to the side and he began to turn. His second step had him half way through his turn and the next one completed the 360 degree rotation as he threw his hands forward, fingers spread wide and palms aimed at Gaara.

Gaara probably couldn't see the attack coming, but the sand knew it was there. It rose up to protect him a split second before the wind hit. Even with the sand in place, the wind would not be denied. It pushed Gaara's defenses back into his face and then threw both the Suna genin and his ultimate defense against the hard stone wall of the arena.

Naruto waited patiently as Gaara slowly rose to his feet and shook his head. He wondered if Gaara knew that that last attack could have been a killing blow. The original jutsu was supposed to create what was basically a guillotine of wind chakra running parallel to the ground. Naruto had seen it cut a whole squad of enemy ninja who didn't know what they were facing in half. Fortunately, he was exceptionally skilled at elemental manipulation and had pretty good control over his own chakra. Wind could cut like a scalpel or it could hit like a hammer; that was part of the beauty of it.

It was a good thing he could control it so easily. He doubted that the jutsu's creator (though she hadn't, technically, created it yet) would have appreciated seeing her little brother cut in half by something she'd invented. Naruto really hoped that Shikamaru and Temari ended up together in this reality; it had been nice knowing a wind chakra user with a brilliant mind for jutsu creation.

_'Hopefully this time she won't ever answer Shikamaru's door wearing nothing but his chuunin vest and a pair of panties,'_ Naruto mused as Gaara finally seemed to find his balance. _'Shikamaru didn't talk to me for a week after that.'_

ooo

"What the hell is he doing?" Sasuke hissed under his breath as he watched Naruto pass up a perfect opportunity to end the fight.

"Showing off?" Shikamaru tried.

Sasuke shot his fellow genin a reproachful glare, feeling certain that he should argue against that comment for the sake of his teammate, but not sure that he really disagreed. "Naruto doesn't do that when things are really dangerous," he said after a moment.

Shikamaru shrugged. "He doesn't seem to think Gaara is all that dangerous… though who knows where he got _that_ idea?"

"Naruto's been weird about Gaara from the very beginning," Sakura said softly as she stared down at her blond teammate. "Gaara threatened to kill him and he acted like it was just a big joke."

"Naruto saved my team from him," Shikamaru said with a slow nod. "That guy would have killed us for the fun of it during the second test and Naruto showed up and saved us… he acted like it was kind of a joke then too, but that might have been because it was just a bunch of his shadow clones."

"And Gaara's obsessed with him," Sakura added. "Do you see the way he stares at Naruto all the time?"

"Maybe he's the reason why Naruto wasn't interested in Hinata," Sasuke offered with a smirk.

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Shut up."

Shikamaru gave the two a funny look and then said, "I don't know anything about that, but Naruto is obviously stronger than Gaara."

"No," Sakura said with a shake of her head, "Gaara's still holding back. When he fought me…"

"He wasn't any stronger than he's shown himself to be now," Shikamaru finished for her. "Actually, he wasn't fighting this hard then, but that might be because you and Naruto attack in different ways." He looked down at Gaara and towards him, "Look."

They did and they saw it. Gaara did not look as focused as he had when he declared that he was going to kill Naruto just after the second test. He did not look bored like he had against Kabuto. He did not look calm or furious as he had at times during his fight with Sakura. No, Gaara looked scared; scared and tired and half-crazy. His eyes were wide, his body unsteady, and his limbs shaking.

It was at that moment that a fresh wave of Gaara's killer intent rolled over them. It was stronger than anything almost any of them had ever felt. Only Sakura had felt something like it before, it still gave her nightmares from time to time actually.

"This is bad," she whispered as the sand began to swarm to Gaara.

ooo

"I-I'm sorry… I have to say that I was the o-one who created it," Hinata whispered softly.

Hiashi frowned at his daughter's answer. She hadn't said that she _had_ created the variation on Juuken that she'd used in her match against Neji, but chose instead to say that it was the answer that she _had_ to give. Had she claimed ownership of it, he would have had to accept her answer. He wasn't sure that he would have believed her, but that might have been more due to his long held belief about her abilities than anything else. By answering the way she had, she'd practically insured that he would assume that she had not been the creator of the style.

But then who was?

The conversation about Hizashi's true reason for dying that day had been surprisingly easy. Neji had initially scoffed at the idea, but Lee, of all people, had pointed out that even if the result was the same, Hizashi had overcome his fate – something that Neji strove to do everyday. He also noted that the story involved Hizashi not only striking a Main House member, but also painted him as the hero.

Hiashi hated having an outsider there to hear of his personal failure, but almost hated it more to have that same outsider cut so easily to the heart of the matter. It was… embarrassing to have family troubles laid before one they did not concern, but Lee's comment seemed to bring Neji around faster than he might have done on his own.

With that issue settled he had moved to a more relaxed, at least for himself, topic: Hinata's taijutsu style. The moment the subject was broached, Hinata had grown visibly more nervous and guarded. Her answers to his questions where offered up half-heartedly and she'd contradicted herself twice.

Lee had been very excited to hear about a new form of taijutsu, but his exuberance seemed to only cause her to grow more nervous.

But why? What could she possibly be hiding? It had been clear that she hadn't mastered the techniques yet, but the basis was there for something that could revolutionize the clan… if the elders accepted the changes to something that was supposed to be "perfect." There weren't, to Hiashi's knowledge, any people who had the level of skill necessary to create such a style that weren't in good standing within the clan. Even if it was a Branch member, there was no shame in celebrating such genius. So why would she hide it?

"Many members of our clan were here to see your fight," Hiashi pointed out. "You will not be able to hide behind flimsy lies when an answer is demanded of you."

Hinata's head snapped to the side and she gasped as if she'd been physically struck. To be called a liar, in front of an outsider no less, was to have one's honor called into question. The only way Hiashi could have made his point any firmer would be to have spit in her face.

"I'm sorry, father," she whispered, tears in her eyes. "I do not wish to lie to you, but… but I can only s-say that I was the one who created the s-style. Please do not ask me again."

Hiashi stared at her, his blank eyes tracing every detail of her face, the twitching of her fingers, the movements of her lips, and even the nearly invisible shaking of her hair as a shiver ran down her spine. She _wanted_ to tell him. Desperately wanted to, in fact, but she couldn't for some reason.

A shadow of a smile appeared on his lips. Never in her life had she stood up to him like this. It wasn't quite the way he'd hoped she would one day show him her backbone, but she'd once again shown that she was growing stronger and that was acceptable for now. "I will not ask until you are permitted to say, but I hope that you have a very good reason for vowing to remain silent on the issue. The clan elders will demand answers, but I will do what I can to make them understand your situation."

Hinata's eyes widened and she looked up at him for almost the first time since he'd entered the room. "Thank you," she said in shock.

Hiashi felt an unsettling twist in his stomach that she would be so surprised by his willingness to help her, but didn't allow it to show on his face. Hinata apparently didn't understand him any better than he understood her. He wasn't sure if such a thing could be repaired or if it even should be. She'd found strength, which was what he'd been hoping for her; if he suddenly showed pride how would she take it? Would she strive to grow stronger still or would she rest in his acceptance?

He would have to think about it before he made a decision. For now, it was enough that she knew he would support her in this issue.

He turned to Neji, ready to offer to help his nephew further develop the techniques that he'd discovered on his own, but before he could, a faint wave of killer intent washed through the room. All four heads snapped towards the hallway that led out to the battlegrounds.

"Naruto-kun," Hinata whispered as she pushed off the bed and started for the door before realizing what she was doing. Turning quickly, she bowed low to her father and said, "F-forgive me, I was…"

Hiashi dipped his head ever so slightly. "You are excused."

Hinata was out the door before the last syllable was out of her mouth.

Hiashi watched as the door closed behind her and then turned to Neji and Lee. "What do you know about Uzumaki Naruto?"

ooo

Where did Uzumaki Naruto's strength come from?

It was a simple question, but it seemed to have no answer. Gaara had fought literally hundreds of ninja in his short life. He'd fought strong ninja and weak ninja. He'd fought ninjutsu users, genjutsu users, taijutsu users, and all of the available combinations thereof. He'd fought seasoned war veterans and he'd fought children. He'd been stronger than almost everyone he'd ever faced and he'd killed upwards of ninety-five percent of them.

Uzumaki Naruto was different.

This was the first time that Gaara had ever even entertained the idea that he might not survive. It was the first time that he could remember that he'd ever really felt afraid for his life.

And Naruto wasn't even trying to kill him. Instead, he was just standing there, waiting patiently for Gaara to steady himself and attack again. Why? Where did he find the strength that he could take this match so easily?

Gaara hated him for his strength. No, hate wasn't the right word. It wasn't strong enough. Gaara didn't hate Naruto, he despised him.

The blond didn't deserve the strength that he so casually flaunted.

As Gaara forced his legs to stop shaking, he glared at the blond and vowed in his heart to kill him no matter what it took. He'd never considered risking his life for something, but he was willing to risk his life to destroy his tormentor.

Because no matter how strong Naruto was, he wasn't stronger than _that_.

He thought that he was a monster like Gaara, but he didn't know what real monsters looked like.

Deep within Gaara he thought he heard the sounds of a drunken giggle as his mother felt his control slipping. He was going to let _it_ out to play and they all knew it.

"You're strong," he growled through clenched teeth, "so strong." He turned and looked up at the balcony where Naruto's teammates were watching. "And you have so many friends." He reached up and grabbed a fistful of his red hair and grimaced at the pain he felt. "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to destroy everything that you are, everything that you would have been. I'm going to take all of that life and crush it. That way, I'll survive… that way, I'll feel alive!"

The pain hit all at once and Gaara dropped to his knees as he cried out and clutched his cramping stomach. He could feel the sand creeping across his back, spreading from the gourd up and around his neck and face and down his arm.

"Stop!" Naruto yelled, almost sounding fearful for the first time. "You can't do that here!"

Gaara loved the fear. He drank it in and it warmed his belly. Naruto's fear was like a fine wine. Gaara was going to drink and drink until he was filled up… and then he was going to destroy the source of that delicious nectar so that no one else would taste anything from Naruto ever again. It would be all his, forever and ever.

"That's right," he growled as his face became monstrous as the transformation began, "give me more and more. Let me feel it until the very end!"

He lifted his enormous right arm, already feeling the sand flowing down his left as he did so, and held it up for Naruto to see. The sand formed more than a second skin now; it had practically swallowed him up and formed the representation of the monster within him. His arm was thick and tan like the sand with dark lines twisting and zigzagging along its length. His hand was now shaped like the claw of a vicious predator, ready to destroy whatever he unleashed it upon.

And he was going to unleash it on Uzumaki Naruto.

Gaara's yellow eyes with their star-shaped pupils locked onto Naruto as a vicious grin spread across his face. "Come and meet your death!"

His clawed hand shot forward, crossing the distance between himself and Naruto in the blink of an eye. Naruto was surprised by the transformation, his fear hung heavily in the air, but he wasn't paralyzed by it. Most people who saw Gaara when he reached this point were dead within a few seconds, too frightened to move when he attacked, but not Naruto. He leapt back and then dove to the side to avoid the second strike.

Gaara actually preferred it to last longer. If Naruto had died right away, it would have been one of the worst disappointments of Gaara's life.

Naruto wasn't disappointing, fortunately. He twisted, flipped, and dove out of the way every time one of Gaara's transformed hands came at him. After nearly three minutes, he'd only taken two glancing blows, but they'd been enough to rip open his jacket and shirt, bloodying him slightly.

After the second time, he started fighting back. He still spent most of his time dodging, but he started making the same slashing motions with his hands that he'd used when they fought in the Forest of Death, cutting the sand anytime it got too close to him.

It was exactly what Gaara wanted. Every second of the fight only made Naruto more enticing to him… if only he would shut up.

After the first couple of seconds, Naruto started talking and just wouldn't stop.

"Is this all the power that you get from that thing?"

"You were faster before you let it take control of you."

"How long do you think you can keep this up?"

"You aren't really fighting for anything; you've already lost."

It was the last one that annoyed Gaara the most. It just seemed to prove how ignorant Naruto was. He still didn't see that Gaara _was_ fighting for something. He was fighting for the single most precious thing in the entire world: his life.

Not that he was fighting for his survival anymore, once Shukaku started to come out nothing could stand against him, but he was fighting to prove that he had a reason to exist. That he had a reason to live.

That was definitely not nothing.

"Do you know what I'm fighting for?" Naruto asked as he flowed around another attack and then ducked under the sand spike that shot out of the side of the claw and nearly took off his head.

"I don't care," Gaara growled as he thrust his arm towards the blond.

"I think you do," Naruto replied and then flipped over the clawed hand that would have pinned him to the wall and crushed him. He landed easily and smiled, suddenly more confident than he'd been since the transformation, maybe since the beginning of the whole fight. "I'm fighting for you. I'm fighting to save you from the darkness, because you're my friend."

Gaara's hatred seemed to double in intensity and he lifted both hands over his head and swung them down at Naruto.

Naruto dove to the side, rolling smoothly to his feet as his fingers formed seals, and then thrust his hands forward. A wave of air slammed into Gaara, but it lacked the strength to lift him off the ground with his added weight. Instead his feet slid along the ground, leaving a trail in the sand.

"I don't need to be saved by you," Gaara snarled. "The darkness gives me my strength, why would I leave it?" He lifted his right hand over his head, summoning more and more sand into it until it seemed to be larger and thicker than some of the trees in the Forest of Death. "I don't need you because I'm stronger than you," he said with a smile as he watched Naruto's eyes grow wide. "You can't run away from this, I'm done playing with you!"

As he brought the enormous limb down, the fist began to noticeably expand; there really would be no dodging this time.

And apparently Naruto wasn't interested in dodging. Instead, he closed his eyes and let out a slow breath before cocking his own fist, and then, just as mountain of sand was about to crush him, he swung.

Time seemed to stop for Gaara. It should have been a killing blow. His hand was nearly as large as Shukaku's were when the full transformation occurred. There was nothing that could stand up to that sort of might. Nothing that could stop that sort of power. Nothing that could beat him when he called upon his full strength.

Naruto should have been squashed flat. He should have been pounded into the ground, his body mashed until his blood, and bones, and organs exploded out of him. His skull should have been split open and his brains should have been smeared across the dirt floor of the arena.

Punching a hand that large? What could that possibly have done? It was like a gnat trying to stop a tree from falling. Meaningless. Pointless.

The sand fist exploded under the force of Naruto's punch.

Gaata could only stare in awe and terror as the shower of sand fell around the two of them.

One punch. That was it. One insignificant punch against the might of Shukaku and Gaara.

From within the falling sand, Naruto suddenly appeared. "I won't let anything stop me from saving you," he croaked. "You're my friend; I'll go to hell and back to save you."

He flashed Gaara a friendly smile, his lips seeming to extend from one side of his face to the other… in fact, they _did_ extend from one side of his face to the other.

"Ah, crap," Naruto croaked again, his eyes seeming to bulge out of his head a little more than was natural or even, Gaara had thought, physically possible. "I really thought I had it this time!" He looked down at a webbed hand and sighed. "Just a sec."

His brought his hands together, forming seals, and then slammed his webbed hand down on the ground as black seals spread out from his palm.

There was a small explosion of smoke that quickly cleared to reveal a small, wizened toad. The toad looked around in confusion and then up at Naruto, "Who are you, kid?"

Naruto made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a ribbit and then said, "I'll tell you later, but right now I need that stick of yours."

"My stick?" the toad asked, scratching his head.

"Don't play with me you wrinkly old bastard," the blond growled holding up his webbed hand which now seemed to be dotted with warts. "The stick, the stick!"

"Are you Jiraiya-chan's new student?" the toad asked, apparently unconcerned with Naruto's desperation and the compounding changes he seemed to be going through.

Naruto's hand balled into a large, slippery-looking fist as his huge mouth spread wider in what seemed to be an effort to bear his teeth at the toad. "Just hit me with that stick already before I can't change back!"

The old toad cocked an eyebrow at the blond and shrugged. "Alright, but the three of us are going to have a long talk later; he's not supposed to be showing those things to just anyone." He clapped his hands together and suddenly a walking stick appeared in his hands; then he wound up and smacked Naruto on the back of the head.

The blond grabbed his head with both hands and growled through clenched teeth. "You didn't have to hit me that hard!"

"You were already pretty far gone; I didn't want to take any chances and leave some natural energy inside of you," the toad replied with a suspicious smile. He watched as Naruto continued to rub his head for a moment and then looked up at the crowd and Gaara, apparently noticing them for the first time. "What's going on?"

"Chuunin Exam," Naruto replied, finally recovering and straightening up.

"Wow, these things are getting pretty serious."

"Yeah well, this is sort of a special case… and I should probably get back to what I was doing."

"When you're done, you better call me back. I'm guessing you've got a pretty interesting story to share with me."

"Can't wait," Naruto sighed with a roll of his eyes.

The toad gave the blond one more strange look and then vanished in a second cloud of smoke.

Naruto turned to Gaara and smiled apologetically. "Sorry about that. I still don't have that skill down perfectly." He scratched the back of his head, wincing when he touched the spot where he'd been hit. "Probably would have looked cooler if I hadn't almost turned into a toad, huh?"

Gaara had no answer. He wasn't sure what he could say or do at this point. Besides the absurdity of the whole toad-stick-smacking incident, he was still struggling with the fact that Naruto had essentially crushed the sum of Gaara's power with what seemed to be a purely physical attack. It was a sign of strength that he had no counter for, no means of overpowering.

"When I said I'd go to hell and back to save you, I meant it," Naruto told him. "A couple more seconds there and I might have been a toad for the rest of my life!"

Gaara still had no answer, but he was beginning to hear the whisperings of Shukaku in the sand as it swirled around him. Naruto claimed that he would do anything to save Gaara, but that was a lie. No one really tried to save Gaara. No one cared about Gaara. He had almost a dozen years of evidence to support that claim. In this life, he was the only thing that mattered. The only one who loved him, the only one who cared, who didn't want to see him disappear was Gaara himself.

"Killing you will keep me from disappearing," he whispered. "It will validate my existence. If I lose, I die, that is the way of life."

Naruto shook his head. "Is that really what you believe? That my death will keep you alive, keep you feeling alive for a little longer?"

"It's reality."

"You're wrong. You're just scared of the idea of someone caring. You're scared that if you think someone cares and they hurt you again, you won't be able to survive it. You're afraid to see that kind of pain, so you kill everyone so you don't have to deal with it anymore." A smile spread across Naruto's face. "I know you now. The real you. I've been your friend this whole time, but I didn't completely know you until just now. You kill people and keep their blood in your sand, holding them in your gourd so you won't be alone anymore, don't you?"

Gaara's yellow eyes widened and his hand rose up without him even thinking about it.

Naruto didn't flinch. "You're afraid of being alone, so you'll do anything to keep from having to feel that pain."

The sand claw shot forward and wrapped around Naruto.

Naruto didn't fight back. "Loneliness… it hurts more than anything anyone could imagine, doesn't it? It makes you wish you were dead every second of the day. Makes you think about ending it all, so long as you don't have to feel that pain anymore, right?"

Naruto was totally trapped now. Gaara could kill him with little more than a thought, perhaps even less than that (he wasn't completely sure how much thought had gone into this attack in the first place). Naruto was hitting far too close to home for Gaara's comfort.

"I know you, Gaara," Naruto said softly. "You're my friend whether you like it or not. I'd give my life for you."

"You're going to give your life to me right now," Gaara told him, but there was no strength in his voice.

"If that's what it takes," Naruto replied as the claw transformed back into sand and curled its way up his body, until only his face was still visible. "If you feel like you need me to be with you, forced to stay with you instead of willingly doing it… fine. Go ahead." He closed his eyes and let out a slow breath.

Gaara thought that he could actually feel Naruto within the sand. He could feel the warmth of his body, could taste the salt in his sweat, and could hear the beating of his heart. He could take all of that from Naruto, from the world. He could squeeze his hand and the being known as Uzumaki Naruto would be no more.

There was a shout off to his right and he turned just in time to see Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, and Hyuuga Hinata leap over the railing. Nara Shikamaru was right behind them. They were coming to save their friend. They had to know that Gaara was stronger than them, but they were coming anyway. Was that what friendship was?

Gaara looked back at Naruto. He'd never met anyone like him. Hundreds of people had been swallowed up by that sand. Each and every one of them had struggled, their hearts racing, their blood surging through their veins as their terror consumed them and left him feeling drunk with power. Naruto remained almost perfectly still. His heart was beating faster than normal, but he wasn't scared. He was giving himself up…

He was sacrificing himself for someone he'd claimed as a friend.

Gaara looked down at his still-transformed hand.

And then he lowered it, causing the sand to fall away from the blond just as Uchiha Sasuke's fist slammed into Gaara's head, sending sand flying away from it, but doing little real damage to his actual body.

"Stop!" Naruto yelled as Sasuke moved to follow up the attack and Gaara readied himself to kill the interloper.

Sasuke paused mid-swing. Sakura, who was forming seals for some sort of genjutsu, stopped as well. Hinata had been running towards Naruto, but stopped about arm's length away. And Shikamaru… Shikamaru didn't bother listening, he just trapped everyone in his Kagemane no Jutsu and left it at that.

"This match is decided," Hayate called out, stepping into the midst of the frozen mini-battle. "Gaara is the winner!"

"What!?" Sakura gasped in horror.

"You interfered in the match," Hayate informed her, though there seemed to be a small hint of pride in his sickly voice. "Uzumaki Naruto is disqualified and Gaara is the winner."

Sakura's protest wasn't the only one, it was just the first. The crowd erupted in a strange mixture of cheers, angry curses, and boos.

Naruto and Gaara looked up at them in what seemed to be surprise, as if they'd both forgotten why they were even fighting in the first place.

"S-sorry, Naruto-kun," Hinata whispered, "we… we thought…"

Naruto laughed and shrugged. "Don't worry about it. I didn't care about winning anyway." He looked over at Gaara as the sand covering the red head fell away, allowing the young man to emerge from within the monster. Gaara's dark rimmed eyes met Naruto's blue and an understanding passed between them. "I think I got what I wanted." He sighed softly and then his eyes widened, "Shit! Now I owe old man Teuchi a thousand ryo!"

ooo

"Fool," the Forth Kazekage hissed as he shook his head.

"Is there a problem?" Sarutobi asked curiously.

The Kazekage glared at his older counterpart and then returned his eyes to the group of young ninja below them. "To show weakness like that…"

"It was an interesting end to the tournament, wasn't it?"

The Kazekage ignored the question. "Who is Uzumaki Naruto?" he demanded.

It was all Sarutobi could do to keep the smile off of his face. "He's a young boy who was orphaned during the Kyuubi's attack on our village twelve years ago."

"I've never heard of the Uzumaki clan."

"It wasn't very large and he's the only one left after that fateful day."

The Kazekage shook his head once more. "To have a nobody do something like that to Gaara…"

"Gaara did win," Sarutobi pointed out as diplomatically as he could.

"_That_ wasn't a victory."

The Hokage bowed his head slightly, conceding the point. "As you wish." Then, in an effort to change the subject he asked, "Who will you be voting for?"

"None of them."

"Now, now," Sarutobi chuckled, "this was an exciting tournament; certainly a few of those present deserve to advance in rank."

"All of them were at one time or another weak, foolish, or both. I didn't see anyone who deserved the rank of Chuunin."

"What about Uzumaki Naruto?"

"He allowed himself to be put in a situation where he could easily have been killed by his enemy," the Kazekage pointed out. "Power is fine, but any idiot can be strong. He didn't show anything that led me to believe that he is cut out to lead a team on missions."

"And Gaara?"

The Kazekage's eyes narrowed. "He deserves it least of all."

ooo

After about twenty minutes of deliberation by the judges, during which the participants who where not in the infirmary or hospital stood in an extremely uncomfortable silence in the waiting area, the results were tallied and the genin were called back out onto the arena grounds.

Temari and Kankuro watched Gaara carefully as they walked next to him. Neither had ever seen him look so subdued or thoughtful. Gaara was, in some ways, like a force of nature; to be feared and respected, but not to be described as "thoughtful."

If he noticed their stares or guessed the meaning of them, he didn't give any sign.

Once all of them were lined up – except for Kabuto who was still in the hospital – a group of chuunin walked out onto the arena grounds and stood across from them, each holding a small scroll. Tradition dictated that other chuunin would be the ones to hand the first chuunin vests to a new addition to their ranks. Sort of a welcoming into the fold. Usually a few from each village were present, but with only two villages being represented in the finals, the chuunin from the other villages remained on the sidelines.

Strangely, no chuunin from Suna were amongst the group standing across from the genin.

"Ladies and gentleman," he called out in as clear a voice as he could manage, "we will now announce those who have earned the rank of Chuunin." He looked down the line and then said, "Nara Shikamaru, please step forward."

Shikamaru's eyes widened in surprise and his weren't the only ones. He stepped forward as a chuunin formed a seal and a vest appeared in his hands as the scroll vanished. He smiled and dipped his head as he handed the vest to its new owner.

"Hyuuga Hinata, step forward."

If Shikamaru's eyes were wide, then Hinata's were saucers that seemed to cover her whole face. "M-me?" she asked in shock.

Hayate smiled and was nice enough to only answer her question with a small nod.

Hinata stepped forward and received her vest with shaking hands.

"And lastly, Uzumaki Naruto, step forward."

Naruto did not look as shocked as his friends had, and the crowd for the first time did more than politely clap at the announcement as a small roar of approval rose up while Naruto stepped forward.

The chuunin handed him his new vest, his first _ever_ vest, and said, "Great show, kid."

Naruto smiled and put the vest on, looking down at it with a strange feeling of pride. It clashed horribly with his orange jacket and pants, but it was the first chuunin vest that he'd ever received. He'd been basically in charge of the whole village as an adult, but had always, technically, been a genin.

A strange idea struck him and he nearly laughed out loud at the thought.

'_Does this count as a promotion?'_

ooo

After the Exam came to an official end, Naruto and the other genin were dismissed to go receive any first-aid they might need and then were told that they would have the next few days off. Congratulations were given by the Hokage and a slightly-gruff sounding Kazekage, who never gave Naruto any hint that he might be Orochimaru in disguise, and that was basically it. They'd risked their lives dozens of times that day, but now there was nothing left to do but go home and get cleaned up.

Naruto wasn't sure if he should be glad for the rather anticlimactic end or not. On the one hand, his predictions of the future hadn't been even remotely true for this timeline which meant that he looked a bit like a liar or worse. He was certain that he would be having long talks with Sarutobi, Kakashi, as well as with Jiraiya and Fukasaku. He supposed that using senjutsu would be a pretty clear proof that he was who he said he was since that would be hard for a twelve year old spy to have even come close to mastering – never mind the whole finding Myobokuzan issue.

As irritating and potentially troublesome as it was that Orochimaru hadn't attacked, that change meant that a lot of people weren't going to die today, and that was always a good thing. Plus, Sakura and Sasuke had told Naruto that they were going to treat him to Ichiraku for dinner in celebration of his advancement… though he'd have to apologize to Teuchi for not winning and costing him all that money. It wasn't his fault that he'd lost, but it _was_ his fault that the ramen chef was out a thousand ryo. He'd probably be spending all of his time off washing dishes to start paying off his debt.

After returning home and changing his pants and shirt so that he matched the chuunin vest that he didn't think he'd ever take off, Naruto strolled through the village as he meandered towards Ichiraku's.

He was just turning down the street that would take him to his final destination, when someone called out, "Naruto-kun!"

Naruto turned and found Rin running towards him waving and smiling. He smiled back and waited for her.

"Congratulations on making chuunin," she said, putting an arm on his shoulder. "You must be so proud."

"Well," he chuckled rubbing the back of his head and puffing out his vest-covered chest, "it's a start."

It was hard to believe that he'd suspected her of having anything to do with Kakashi's death. The evidence was, he realized the more he thought about it, circumstantial at best. He'd spied on her while she helped train Sakura and almost felt that he owed her future-self an apology. She had helped his friend improve by leaps and bounds, and had given Sakura the sort of big sister/older friend that she seemed to really need. She wasn't Tsunade-baa-chan, but she was a good mentor for Sakura and her work had really shown during Sakura's match with Gaara.

Rin's grin widened and she ruffled his hair good-naturedly. "Have you seen Kakashi? I wanted to make sure I said goodbye…" she blushed a little and added, "uh, again… before I headed home."

Naruto considered teasing her, but let it slide. "You're leaving already?" he asked, feeling a little disappointed that she wouldn't be coming to dinner with his team. He'd hoped to have a chance to talk to her about his parents before she left.

"I was just in town for the Exam," she said with an apologetic smile. "Now that it's over I really should be heading back. The clinic is shorthanded at the moment, so I can't afford to take too much time off. Unfortunately the sick don't take holidays."

"Well, he's probably going to be at Ichiraku's for dinner, but knowing him he'll be an hour late. If you want, I can help you look for him, I still have a few minutes before I'm supposed to be there and," he winked cockily, "I can be in a lot of places all at once if I need to be."

"That's sweet of you, but I can manage. He's probably at home reading that dirty book of his," she rolled her eyes and winked. "It's kind of scary how similar he's become to Obito."

Naruto laughed and glanced in the direction he'd been heading before she stopped him. "Are you sure you don't want to join us for dinner? If you come, we can probably talk sensei into treating us."

"I really would love to, but I'm afraid I just don't have time," Rin said sounding genuinely sorry about disappointing him, "but I'm sure I'll see you again sometime. I still owe you that talk."

"You sure you aren't running out because I practically accused you of being the sort of person who would get drunk, dance naked on a table, and go home with a dozen men to act out something out of one of Kakashi-sensei's books?"

Rin ruffled his hair once more and gave him an affectionate slap to the back of the head. "Get going or your ramen is going to be cold."

Naruto smiled and turned, thoughts of savory noodles already entering his mind. In front of him a man stepped out of a shop and glanced in his direction, upon his head was an Oto hitai-ate. Naruto's eyes narrowed as the man's eyes met his own and then quickly looked away, but not before a flicker of recognition had passed over his face. A second later two more Sound-nin stepped out of the crowd, heading in his direction but trying to appear casual and refusing to look directly at him. Something was wrong, Naruto could feel it, but he wasn't sure what.

He started to turn to call out a warning to Rin when something sharp pricked his neck and a burning sensation ran down his spine, followed almost instantly by a freezing cold that numbed him.

"I'm sorry, Minato-sensei," Rin's whispered voice said as whatever drugs that had just entered his system quickly began to do their work.

Naruto took a stumbling step forward, dislodging the needle that had pricked his neck, and looked up as two of the Sound-nin reached for him. His vision blurred and then everything went dark. His last conscious thought was to wonder whether they caught him or let him fall face-first onto the dirty road.

Not that it mattered.

o

o

A/N: I just know I'm going to hear about _this_ cliffhanger… it does seem like there have been a lot of them lately, but that's just the way it goes, I guess. This is one, you might have guessed, that I've been looking forward to for a while. I did my best to set it up so you'd be somewhat suspicious of her and then start to think that maybe Naruto was wrong all along until: BANG! She's bad!

Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed this chapter. I'm sorry to say that the next one won't be out until the week after next (so I'll update on September 19th). I just have too many classes that require too much reading for me to keep up the every week updating schedule. I'd like to (Lord knows writing this story is more fun that homework), but my grades would pretty much be in the tank or I'd be stuck with no life outside of reading and writing. If I ever have a chapter that just gets done really quick and easy, I'll probably update when it's done even if it hasn't been the full two weeks, but that won't be something that I can keep up on a consistent basis. Every two weeks should allow me to get school stuff done and keep the chapters at a high quality (with a consistent update schedule) without overtaxing myself.

Anyway, please review and let me know what you think. Thanks for reading.

Ryuusa Bakuryuu – "Quicksand Waterfall Current" A technique that allows Gaara to create a massive amount of sand out of the ground. The sand rises up and crashes down on his enemy (Kimimaro was the one it was used against in canon).

Fukasaku – For those who don't know, this is Pa Toad's actual name.

Senjutsu – "Hermit Technique" or "Sage Technique." Using natural energy in addition to the chakra already within a ninja's body. This is what Naruto is currently trying to learn. I realize that he's probably going to master it in canon, but I like the idea of him still struggling a little with it. The history of this will probably come up later, so we have a clear understanding of where the break from canon occurs, but suffice to say that Naruto didn't totally master it, but came close enough that he could defeat Pein with the help of his friends.

Myobokuzan – The place where the toads that Jiraiya and Naruto summon live. It is located a month's travel from Konoha and is almost impossible to find.


	38. Chapter 37

Chapter 37

o

A/N: Apologies in advance for the language in this and future chapters, there's not a lot, but I'm sure there will be more to come. I blame Kishimoto and Tayuya.

Also, for those who don't know, "Sarutobi Hiruzen" is the Third's official name (thanks to Althia9 for getting that info for me) and he'll be referred to as such in this chapter. I'll be going back and fixing it in past chapters as well.

o

Naruto's eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he slumped forward as the tranquilizer took effect. Rin's hand shot forward and caught him by the back of his vest, keeping him from falling to the ground or making any other movement that might draw unwanted attention to them. She glanced out of the corner of her eye at him and smiled. He was already out, sleeping the sleep of the dead. Rin waited patently until the four Sound-nin were within reach and then gave Naruto a slight push forward so he seemed to bump into the foreign ninja on his own.

"Sorry about that," one of the Sound-nin said as he quickly reached out and caught Naruto before his limp body hit the ground. He was about Rin's height with dark hair pulled back into a bushy ponytail. An extra set of arms seemed to be growing out of his armpits. "_You okay_?" he asked with a sarcastic chuckle.

Rin ignored his stupidity and brought her fingers together as she preformed Shikon no Jutsu. Technically, the jutsu was intended for dead bodies, but with a few subtle manipulations, unconscious ones worked just as well until they woke up… and Naruto would not be waking up anytime soon.

Rin had been briefed on the known capabilities of the Kyuubi. She knew that it could heal almost any injury in a matter of hours while it lay dormant within Naruto; when it manifested the healing time was reduced to minutes or even seconds. She'd just dumped enough tranquilizers into Naruto's system to keep a grown man twice Naruto's weight unconscious for the better part of two days. It was a potentially lethal dose to pump into a child's body, but Naruto should live.

Even if he didn't, it would be no large loss to the world, though it would cost her more than she could bear.

When the jutsu took hold, Naruto straightened up and his eyes opened about halfway. He looked a little drunk, but not unconscious and that was what really mattered at the moment. If she added more chakra to his face, she could probably get his eyes to open a little more naturally, but she'd run the risk of some of that chakra bleeding into his brain and helping him shake off the effects of the drugs.

"You go first, we'll follow you," a gray-haired Sound-nin said. Rin spotted what looked like a second head sticking out of his neck, or at least it had similar colored hair. She glanced at the other two to see if they also possessed such conspicuous features, but – aside from one of them being exceptionally overweight – they at least seemed normal.

She rolled her eyes at him, but did her best not to let any more of her annoyance show. She'd been fighting wars when his greatest accomplishment in life was not soiling his bed at night; who did he think he was trying to give her orders?

She sent a jolt of chakra into Naruto's legs and soon he was walking towards the gate.

A chuunin with spiky black hair stopped them before they could step through the doors, carefully taking down their names on a clipboard. When he got to Naruto, he frowned and looked at the blond quizzically. "You have a mission already?"

Rin smiled sweetly and answered for Naruto, "He's just seeing me off. Kakashi is busy with something, so Naruto offered to escort me to the gate… sweet of him, but unnecessary."

The chuunin shrugged. "No big deal, I just wanted to know if I had to actually write his name down or if he was going to come right back inside."

Rin forced a blush into her cheeks and shyly said, "I do have a message I'd like him to give Kakashi that's a little… private, so he might be out for a few minutes, but then he'll be right back in."

The chuunin nodded in understanding and then waved her through as he began taking down the names of the Sound-nin who had lined up behind her as though they were only coincidentally leaving at the same time. Rin had been extremely careful not to do anything that might link her to anyone from Otogakure and was certain that they would clear the checkpoint just as easily as she had. She caused Naruto's legs to start moving once more and soon they were outside the large gate.

As soon as they reached a point where they were hidden from view, Rin stopped the jutsu and Naruto slumped forward again. She didn't bother to catch him this time and he landed heavily in the dirt.

"Watch it," one of the Sound-nin said as he came into view. "Orochimaru-sama wants him unharmed."

Rin glared at the boy and said, "It will live."

"Can you use that jutsu to make him run with us?" asked the fat one. "It will be a lot quicker if we don't have to carry him."

Rin shook her head. "The more chakra in its system, the greater the chance that it will wake up."

"Who gives a fuck?" the only female of the group asked, brushing her pink hair over her shoulder. Her hair looked only slightly like Sakura's, but Rin decided not to look at her anymore.

"Tayuya, girls shouldn't talk like that…" the fat one chided.

"Shut up, _fuckin'_ fatass!"

"Both of you shut up!" Rin hissed through clenched teeth, staring at the fat one. "First of all, if this thing wakes up, it will rip open your head and piss on your brains. Second, you two arguing is only going to call attention to us before we even get—"

"Going?" a voice asked from above.

Rin spun around and looked up into the tree to find three ANBU standing over them. She didn't even bother trying to move to block their view of Naruto's prone form. "I see some things haven't changed much."

"The boy is under special watch, orders from Hokage-sama," the leader of the ANBU squad informed her. "The moment he left the village, we were onto you."

Rin glanced over her shoulder at the four Sound-nin. "Are you four going to do me any good here?" she asked.

"Kidomaru, take care of them," the gray-haired one said with a bored voice.

Kidomaru stepped forward and stretched his four arms. "With pleasure." He started to bring his hands together, but before he could, Rin struck.

She was in the tree in an instant, surprising the three ANBU who probably knew next to nothing about her. Her hand shot towards the throat of the nearest ANBU, who was already trying to twist away from her. It only took a touch to put him down. He wasn't dead, but he wasn't going to do any fighting for a while as all of the muscles in his throat constricted, violently clamping down on his esophagus and trachea. She imagined his eyes had probably gone wide under his mask, but didn't get to check as her fist slammed into his head, sending him crashing to the ground.

The second and third members of the ANBU team had been given enough time to recover from their surprise and they were now on the offensive. One had drawn his ninjaken while the other was forming seals for some jutsu. Rin watched the ninjaken swing down at her, and then stepped lightly to the side, easily dodging it. The ANBU brought it back up and prepared for another strike, but before he could, her fingers jabbed up into his elbow. His hand went numb instantly and the weapon tumbled from his grasp.

Rin caught the ninjaken before it had fallen five centimeters. In one smooth motion, she rotated the blade in her grip and drove it up under the stunned ninja's chin. She pushed her foot against his chest and then kicked off, pulling the blade from his skull as she flipped backwards. She landed in a crouch and threw the sword at the remaining ANBU member. The blade caught the man in the throat and he stumbled back and then with a faint gurgling cry for help he fell from the branch he'd been standing on.

For a moment, the only sound that could be heard was the gasping of the first – and only living – ANBU member as he tried to get air into his lungs. Then, Rin stood and calmly dropped to the ground next to the ANBU she had just killed and pulled the sword from his throat. She walked back to the four Sound-nin, her face stern and her senses alert for any signs of further interference.

"I'm not getting anything extra for babysitting you, so I expect you to keep up," she told them matter-of-factly. "If you slow me down, get hurt, or do anything that endangers the success of this mission…" she slammed the ninjaken into the gasping ANBU's chest, cutting perfectly through his heart, "…I will kill you. Do you understand me?"

The gray-haired ninja smiled at her, his dark eyes dancing with delight. "I think we understand each other perfectly," he said. "I'm Sakon. The big guy is Jirobo, next to him is Kidomaru, and she," he pointed to the girl, "is Tayuya. Orochimaru-sama sends his greetings."

Rin picked up Naruto and threw him at Jirobo. "I don't care," she told Sakon. "Let's go before that things wakes up or someone else comes looking for him."

She turned, leapt back into the trees, and took off towards the meeting place.

The four Sound-nin watched her go for a second.

"I like her," Kidomaru said.

Tayuya spit. "I think she's a bitch."

Sakon shrugged. "Then you two have something in common, let's go."

ooo

"You should have seen him. He was… he was incredible. Honestly. I know he's… you know, but you would have been proud of him. Hell, I was proud of him, and I didn't even train him, or at least I didn't train him this time.

"He was just like you, like both of you, really. Fast, powerful, a bit of a showoff, but fighting with heart… I wish you could have seen him."

Kakashi sighed and looked up at the sky. It was a good day. Naruto had been wrong about Suna and Oto invading during the Chuunin Exam, but for the moment he wasn't worried about that. He believed Naruto was what he claimed he was and this change wasn't quite great enough to unsettle his faith. Naruto had, after all, admitted that Orochimaru was supposed to have entered the Exam. The fact that he hadn't shown himself during the test in the Forest of Death meant that something had changed. Perhaps it was the fact that Sasuke's Sharingan had not manifesting until later that caused the change. If Naruto was right, then that was what Orochimaru wanted, after all.

Or perhaps the time line had changed so significantly that Naruto's predictions were going to be totally off the farther away they got from the point he returned to the past. That would mean that Rin might not be a traitor also, if she even was in the first place.

He hoped that was the case. Rin had always been something of a conundrum to him. When they were children, he'd known of her little crush and been… annoyed, was probably the best word for it. He had a lot to do, a lot to prove. He didn't have time to deal with a little girl's feelings.

As they grew up and got to know each other, her crush had softened a little and they'd become pretty good friends. She was smart and strong and he respected her skills. Had things continued on like that for a few more years, he might even have thought about letting them become something more – as he was sure she wanted. There was no harm in it and she was as good a choice for a wife as any.

Plus, it would have been another thing to rub Obito's nose in and back then he'd been that much of a bastard…

No, that wasn't totally true. Obito had little to do with it. If there had been even a hint that Rin returned Obito's feelings, Kakashi would have pushed her off on him. Obito was an annoyance, but Kakashi hadn't hated him or been quite spiteful enough to marry someone just to show him up.

Then they were given _that_ mission and everything changed.

Suddenly, Rin wasn't a friend that Kakashi could care about or ignore depending on his mood. She was precious to him… precious to _them_. Obito had loved her and that meant two things.

First, it meant that Kakashi was obligated to protect her with his life for as long as she lived. Obito's parents were still alive, he had a little brother and an older sister, but none of them would serve as Kakashi's connection to him. It could only be Rin, the young woman Obito loved.

Second, it meant that Kakashi could never be to Rin what she wanted him to be. If he returned her feelings, if he took her as his wife or even as a lover… it would be like betraying his best friend.

And Kakashi could not do that. He would not allow himself to love her.

They'd never talked about it, but he suspected that she understood his feelings. When he was appointed to ANBU, Rin knew that she would see a lot less of him. She didn't know that he still kept tabs on her and occasionally watched over her himself, but she wouldn't have missed the fact that he was being careful to keep her at arms distance. She became more of a mission to him than a friend.

When the Kyuubi attacked and the Fourth was killed, Rin had taken it extremely hard. Not only had she lost the man who had been like an older brother or even a father to her, but she'd lost the woman who had been a mother or an older sister as well. With Kushina and Minato dead and Kakashi keeping his distance from her, she had no one to really turn to. In the end, she'd left the ninja corps and taken a position in a distant village, serving as a medic in a village that had been ravaged by the wars and was still without some of the basic services that most hospitals provided.

It was the perfect job for her and Kakashi had been happy when she'd taken it. There she would be safely away from the bloodshed and violence of his life, away from the memories of her sensei and his wife, of Obito, and of Kakashi who wouldn't return her feelings. And, to a degree, it allowed Kakashi to get on with his life. He would never let the wound fully heal, but without her around to remind him of his debt to Obito, he could at least push the memory back for a few hours during the day.

Seeing her again had been… nice. Enough time had passed that the sight of her didn't hurt him as much and they could go back to being friends as they had been in the beginning. Perhaps, after all these years, they could even be more than friends if the feelings were still there. Obito would understand now… he probably would be happy about it even.

Of course, that wasn't something Kakashi would be worrying about anytime soon. Rin had said she'd return sometime later in the year, when things weren't so crazy. Maybe he'd even see about getting his team a mission out to her village to run supplies or something. Naruto would complain about it being a boring mission – unless his promotion let him feel like he could act a little more like the adult he really was – but Sakura would enjoy it and Rin would be glad for a chance to see her temporary student again.

Kakashi looked down at the grave marker and ran his hand along it. "Sensei, your son is strong and your village is safe. Be proud."

ooo

Sakura ran her eyes over the crowd that was passing the ramen stand and blew out an annoyed sigh. She, Sasuke, and several other genin from the rookie squads had been waiting for over forty-five minutes for Naruto to run home and change his shirt "real quick." What was taking him so long?

"He only wears orange clothes," Sasuke pointed out with a small smile, "maybe he's having trouble finding something to match his vest."

Sakura chuckled a little and pushed up onto her tiptoes to see if she could spot her friend in the distance. At her height, the addition of the few centimeters was not really enough to make that big of a difference, but it felt like it helped. "He's as bad as sensei."

"Why don't we just start without him?" Chouji asked.

"Chouji, that's rude!" Ino grumbled.

"Naruto'll understand."

Shikamaru rubbed the bridge of his nose and said, "Maybe he isn't coming. He did say that he owed Teuchi-san some money, didn't he? Maybe he chickened out."

Sakura shook her head at the bickering team and said, "Naruto doesn't chicken out of anything. He's just taking his sweet time to piss us off."

"All the more reason to eat now," Chouji pointed out.

The conversation circled back around at that point, with Ino arguing that it was rude, Shikamaru muttering something that let everyone know that he was both bored and annoyed by the arguing, and Kiba – who had just stepped over to join them – taking up Chouji's side so they would have someone to keep up the cycle on the next loop. Sakura tuned them out and kept looking for Naruto. She wouldn't mind seeing Kakashi or Rin either, though she doubted Kakashi would be arriving anytime soon, if at all. Rin had said that she would think about coming, but had been sure to say her goodbyes in case she talked herself into heading home the way she was supposed to. It _was_ getting dark out and she had a long journey ahead of her, if she waited too long to start the trip, she'd have to spend the night and would loose more time still.

Naruto, on the other hand, had no business being this late. He'd told them he wanted to change his clothes after his match, but that he would meet them there in a few minutes. She'd been surprised when he hadn't actually arrived before them anyway. After all, this _was_ ramen they were talking about and she and Sasuke had said that they would treat him.

Naruto wasn't the sort to delay free ramen…

Sakura smiled and shook the inkling of a stray thought from her head. There was no way something had happened to him. They were in the village, there were no major conflicts going on between the main ninja villages, and Konoha's forces were mostly confined to the village to make sure that nothing happened during the Exam. What could happen?

Her eyes strayed in the direction of Naruto's apartment and she bit her lip. He was fine, she was sure, but it _was_ pretty weird of him to be taking this long. _'Sasuke-kun is right and Naruto just can't find anything that matches his vest,'_ she thought. _'It's Naruto, after all, his taste in clothing has always been questionable… though wouldn't that mean that he'd be here quicker because he wouldn't worry about matching?'_

Another small crowd of people wandered past the ramen stand and, again, Naruto was no where to be seen.

"Hey, Hinata?" Sakura called out over the argument that was still circling amongst her friends. "Can you come with me for a second?"

Hinata blushed a little, but nodded quickly, happy for an excuse to get away from the arguing.

"Where are you going?" Sasuke asked.

"To Naruto's," Sakura replied. "If he's having trouble finding something that matches, Hinata and I will be able to help him."

Sasuke obviously wasn't fooled. "And if he's not?"

"We'll just go there and come right back, I'm sure it's nothing and it will only take us a few minutes."

Sasuke nodded. "If he's not there, we'll go find Kakashi when you get back."

"That won't be hard," Sakura smiled. "Rin-sensei told me what he's doing when he's late all the time… but it probably won't come to that. I'm sure Naruto's just being stupid."

With that, Sakura and Hinata hurried off towards Naruto's apartment. It wasn't a long trip, but once they arrived they found the door locked and no one answering their knocks.

"Can you use your eyes to see through the walls?" Sakura asked after the fourth attempt to get Naruto to answer the door.

Hinata's face flushed. "Um, I… I don't think that w-would be very…"

Sakura didn't have time for Hinata to be polite or for her to be worried about spying on Naruto in some state of undress. She was starting to get worried and her fear made her blunt. "Either look through the wall or I'll knock down the door. Your pick."

Hinata brought her fingers together instantly. "Byakugan!"

Almost as soon as the veins around her eyes had bulged with the activation of her kekkei genkai, Hinata closed her eyes and the veins relaxed once more. "N-Naruto-kun isn't here," she said somewhat thankfully, though there was a hint of worry in her voice now as well.

Sakura was more than hinting at worry; she was quickly reaching the point where she'd be drowning in it. Without a second thought, she kicked Naruto's door down and marched inside. She would apologize later if it turned out he was just messing around and pulling a prank on them…

Actually, if he was messing around, she had no intention of apologizing at all for breaking his door. It would serve him right for making her worry like this.

She looked around quickly, noting the torn clothes that had been discarded on the ground and the utter lack of any signs of life. Naruto had been here, he'd changed his clothes (with apparently little trouble, meaning he was probably wearing orange pants with his green vest), and it looked like he'd left. Perfectly normal. She was overreacting.

But then, where was he if he'd changed and left already?

"We need to get back and go find Kakashi-sensei," she said as she marched out of the apartment and started down the hallway. "Something about this feels wrong."

ooo

Sarutobi Hiruzen leaned back in his chair, took a deep drag on his pipe and sighed. Things had gotten a little more complicated for him, but in a good way. Had Naruto been right about Suna and Orochimaru conspiring to attack the village during the Chuunin Exam, a lot of good people would have died, but Naruto's story would be that much more proven.

Now it seemed like the only real proof he had was some small, possibly coincidental, preknowledge of the answer to Ibiki and Kakashi's tests and a larger than natural jutsu repertoire. He'd also known about Kurenai and Team Eight's mission prior to them returning, but there were ways for him to have known about that as well.

It would have been so much easier to have believed him if Orochimaru had just shown up during the Exam…

That was not to say that Hiruzen didn't believe him. On the contrary, he still believed Naruto very much, but it did mean that he had to listen to those doubts a little more carefully than he would have if there had been an invasion. It also meant that he had to consider the possibility that he wanted to believe Naruto simply because Naruto was Minato's son and the thought of him being a traitor was too much to bear.

He took another drag on the pipe and then leaned back and blew a large cloud of smoke into the air above him. It hung there for a moment and then slowly began to drift back down towards him.

Hiruzen knew he had to be careful. He couldn't let his personal feelings cloud his judgment on this issue. There was a very good chance that Naruto was a spy or traitor, though a very unusual one in that he seemed to call as much attention to himself as possible and made outlandish claims when they weren't necessary. In fact, he was a total failure as a spy as near as anyone could tell because he was so totally conspicuous… and yet, that could be the beauty of his plan. If he wasn't the actual one doing the spying, but was simply acting as a diversion…

The Hokage shook the thought away. That sort of conspiracy theory was pointless. Entertaining such thoughts would only lead to jumping at shadows around every corner and seeing potential spies in every ally.

His thoughts were interrupted by an urgent knocking on the door.

He looked up and was about to tell whoever it was to come in, when the door was thrown open and a wide-eyed chuunin rushed inside. "Forgive me, Hokage-sama," he said as he dropped to one knee and bowed his head, "but there's an urgent notice that just arrived and…" he stood and handed it over, his hand trembling slightly, "you need to read it yourself."

Hiruzen's eyes scanned the page until he got about halfway through it and realized what he was seeing. He went back to the top and started over, drinking in the details very carefully. "When did this arrive?" he demanded, rising from his seat.

"Just now."

"Where's the Kazekage?"

The chuunin shook his head. "I don't know. I believe they were planning on heading back to Sunagakure as soon as the tournament ended… they may have already left."

The Hokage snatched his hat from the desk where he'd dropped it and set it firmly on his head. "Find him and warn him," he said as he rose and started to march out of the room. "After that, alert the council and tell them to meet me in the conference room, and then round up as many of the senior jounin as you can find. We'll need to at least send out a reconnaissance team as soon as possible."

The chuunin was following at Hiruzen's heels, nodding at each instruction. When he heard the final one he stopped and asked, "Then you think we really are…"

Hiruzen paused at the doorway and sighed. "If this letter is real, then, yes, we may very well have been at war for almost an hour without realizing it. Conflicts have been decided in less time than that. Don't delay in carrying out your duties. Get as many people to help you as you need, this takes precedence over all other duties."

ooo

Sasuke, Sakura, and Hinata found Kakashi standing in front of the blue-green cenotaph, just as Sakura had said they would. By the time they rounded the last bend in the path and found him, he was already turned towards them, his lone visible eyebrow raised in question.

"Have you seen Naruto?" Sakura asked without preamble.

"I thought he would be eating with you guys," Kakashi replied in surprise.

"He never showed up."

"Sakura and Hinata checked his apartment and he wasn't there either," Sasuke added.

Kakashi absorbed this information and then asked, "Where else have you looked?"

"Nowhere, we just came here," Sakura replied. "If he's not at home and he's not at Ichiraku's, where would he be?" She waited for Kakashi to reply, but when he was quiet for a moment she added, "Do you think he's just messing around or something? Playing a prank on us?"

Kakashi shook his head. "Not today. This is one day where he definitely wouldn't play this sort of prank."

"Then where could he be?"

Before Kakashi could answer, a chuunin appeared next to him. "Kakashi-san, I have urgent news. Hokage-sama has summoned you to the Tower immediately."

"Why?"

The chuunin glanced at the two genin and newly anointed chuunin and said, "A village was attacked along the northern boarder… the only message we've received from them claimed that the attackers where from Kumogakure."

Kakashi was suddenly all business. "Sasuke, Sakura-chan, come with me. Hinata-chan, go back to your home. Your clan will want you there, at least until we know more."

"B-but…"

Kakashi shook his head. "You remember what they were after the last time, don't you?"

Hinata swallowed hard and closed her eyes. She knew alright.

Kakashi turned his attention back to Sasuke and Sakura and asked, "Did Rin meet you for dinner?"

The two genin shook their heads.

Kakashi frowned under his mask. He'd known Rin was planning on leaving that night, but he'd thought there was a good chance that she'd delay her departure and spend a little more time with Sakura…

And him.

If she was heading back towards her village while there was a war raging, she could be in danger. He needed to know for sure.

"Go to the gate and see if she checked out and if so, when. Meet me at the Tower as soon as you know."

"What about Naruto?" Sakura asked.

Kakashi pursed his lips and said, "Hokage-sama was keeping tabs on him. After the meeting, I'll see what he knows."

Something was nagging him now, some thought that he didn't want to have was tickling the back of his mind and begging to come to the forefront, but Kakashi refused to allow it. He suspected he knew what the thought was and to even think it was unacceptable. This was Rin; there was no way he could think that about her.

Just because Naruto was right about there being an attack on this particular day didn't mean that he was right about everything…

It couldn't mean that.

ooo

The conference room was brightly lit and uncomfortably warm with all of the bodies crammed into it. Not only had the council members all come, but they'd each apparently felt the need to bring a few aides with them as well. Between all the aides and the jounin who had been instructed to sit in on the meeting, even the large room was a bit overcrowded

Sarutobi Hiruzen stood at the head of the table and most of the murmuring died down instantly. "You all know why I summoned you," he said in a grave voice. "It seems that Kumogakure has raided one of the northern towns. What is more, there are reports of a near simultaneous attack against the Wind Country was carried out by Iwagakure. We have no confirmation about a link between the two attacks, but the timing is obviously suspicious."

He looked around the room, checking for surprise or shock in faces and – perhaps just as importantly – for any lack of it. Naruto had been wrong about the exact time, place, and participants in the attack, but a war had started on the day he'd said it would… there was no explaining that away. What that meant was hard to say, especially when Hiruzen didn't have time to dwell on it, but there was a chance that it meant Naruto had been right about other things as well.

"A message is being sent to the Kazekage to inform him of the situation if he hasn't been already and to offer assistance should we be able to spare it, but he will know that such an offer is mostly symbolic. The last war against Kumo was long and costly, this one may be equally so.

"The first thing we shall need is more information. Three reconnaissance teams will be dispatched to the area immediately, with strict orders not to engage the enemy. Once we know what we are dealing with, further plans will be enacted. For the moment, however, we will be deploying a large portion of our forces half way between Konoha and the boarder, so that we can quickly respond to the situation as needed."

Again his eyes swept the room, but this time it was to make sure that all there were paying close attention to his next words. "If you see any foreign ninja from either Iwa or Kumo, you have permission to attack with deadly force."

ooo

Sakura and Sasuke were practically pacing back and forth in front of the closed doors when the meeting was finally adjourned (or at least partially so as it seemed that only the jounin and aides were leaving). It had taken Sakura a lot of convincing to keep Sasuke from barging in and demanding to hear what the Third knew about Naruto.

In truth, it had been hard for her not to give into the same desire.

Kakashi was the last jounin out of the room and the look in his eye told her what he knew before he even said it. "Hokage-sama hasn't heard anything, but the group watching Naruto failed to check in when they were supposed to."

Sakura wanted to ask why Naruto was being watched in the first place, but she let that question slide for the moment. There would be time for that after Naruto was found.

"He left with Rin-sensei," Sakura said quickly. "The chuunin at the gate said Naruto went out when she left, but he didn't remember him coming back in. He thought that he'd just missed him in the crowd, but…"

Something seemed to click in Kakashi's brain and his eye widened. "Do you remember who else left around the same time?" he asked softly.

Sakura shook her head, but Sasuke said, "A party of two from the Tea Country and three people from Kusagakure left just before, four people from Oto right after, and one from the Waterfall Country a few minutes later."

"Naruto's been kidnapped," Kakashi said. "Wait right here, I have to brief Hokage-sama on this." He turned and walked back into the room.

Sasuke waited for about a half-second before he followed, Sakura on his heels.

Kakashi glanced over his shoulder at them, but didn't seem surprised that they'd disobeyed his order. All of the council members were staring at them and one stood up and demanded to know the reason for the interruption.

"We have a situation that may be related," Kakashi replied. "Uzumaki Naruto is missing and may have been kidnapped by those behind the attacks."

His announcement was met with a moment of stunned silence and then the Third asked, "How sure are you?"

Kakashi's eye shifted around the room as if noting the presence of the different council members – or calling the Third's attention to them – before he said, "The evidence is only circumstantial, but he is definitely missing and who was near him when he was last seen makes the idea of it being just a coincidence seem… improbable."

"What's that supposed to mean?" an older ninja with glasses and a grey beard asked.

"If either Iwa or Kumo gets their hands on _him_…" someone muttered loudly.

"This problem should have been dealt with twelve years ago," another voice declared.

In seconds the room had descended into a chaos of noise as blames and second guessings were passed around like a bowl of candy. The Third shook his head sadly at the scene and then spoke up loudly enough to be heard over the noise, quieting the worst of it.

"We will have to send a team to find him and possibly to bring him back or at least slow his captors down," he announced.

"There's no time for that!"

"We have more pressing needs!"

"Why throw away _valuable_ lives on _him_!"

Sasuke slammed his fist down on the table, nearly cracking the wood. "My team will go and get him," he announced. "With or without your permission. Don't trouble yourselves over something as _trivial_ as the ninja who just kicked the crap out of everyone at the Chuunin Exam. He doesn't need _your_ help anyway."

Without another word or waiting for the scolding that was sure to come as soon as the council members recovered from their surprise, Sasuke turned, threw open the doors, and marched out.

Sakura tried to apologize, but was too busy hurrying after Sasuke to have much success at it.

Kakashi waited until his two genin were out the door before he rubbed the back of his head and said, "Sorry about them, they have this funny notion that their teammate is actually important… not sure where they picked it up. Anyway, we'll be glad to take the Retrieve Uzumaki Naruto mission, with your permission, of course."

"Very well, Kakashi," the Third said before any objections could be voiced, "feel free to recruit a chuunin or jounin to help you in your mission as well."

Kakashi shook his head. "Sorry, but we're the only ones who will take this mission. Team Seven is a family – just like Team Minato was before it – and some business needs to be handled in the family."

If the Third or anyone else in the room understood what Kakashi was talking about, they didn't show it. He knew, however, and he hated that he had to even voice the thought. He hoped against hope that he was wrong, but he couldn't discount the possibility any more.

There was a chance that when he took back Naruto, it would be over the dead body of the one person he didn't think he could bring himself to kill.

Kakashi found Sakura and Sasuke waiting just outside the door. Their grim faces told him that they had an idea of what sort of mission they were going to be embarking upon. Certainly they understood what was at stake.

Kakashi looked at Sasuke first. "Go home and grab as many weapons as you can easily carry." He turned to Sakura and said, "We're probably going to need medical supplies when we find Naruto, and maybe for ourselves if things get dicey." He let out a slow breath and then said, "This mission is not going to be easy. If you don't feel up to it, say so now. There won't be time for second guessing once we start."

Neither of them would back out, but he had to offer them the chance, just in case.

He smiled proudly, aware of just how far his team had come in a short period of time. Only a few months earlier, Sasuke and Sakura would have been glad to be rid of Naruto. They wouldn't have wanted him dead, of course, but they hadn't felt the sort of feelings that would lead to them putting their lives on the line for him.

They really were his proud team.

"Meet me at the gate as soon as you get your supplies."

They took off without a word and Kakashi hurried to take care of the thing he had to do.

In only a few minutes, he was back in front of the cenotaph. His eyes found Obito's name and he gently reached out and ran his fingers along the letters. "I'm sorry, Obito," he whispered. "I hope it isn't her, but if it is…" he looked up at the sky and blinked back the first tears of grief that had formed in his eyes since the day Minato died. "I promised to protect her, but I can't do that if she's a part of this. If she's betrayed this village, I'll have no choice." He ran his fingers over the letters one last time. "Forgive me."

Minutes later, he walked through the gate with Sasuke and Sakura. As soon as they were outside the gates, the last place Naruto had been seen, Kakashi summoned one of his dogs to find and follow Naruto's scent.

Uuhei scratched at the bandages around his neck and head with his back foot and then narrowed his eyes. "I smell blood, Kakashi," he said softly as he put his nose to the ground and began walking towards the nearest cluster of trees.

The three humans followed the dog into the forest and instantly saw what he was referring to. The bodies of the three ANBU hadn't even been covered; they were just laying there waiting to be discovered.

Kakashi didn't bother checking for vitals, they were all obviously dead and he didn't have time to waste. From the looks of things, they'd been dead for at least an hour, maybe more. That was a big head start to have to overcome.

"Do you have him?" he asked Uuhei.

The light brown dog nodded. "Yeah, plus the five he's traveling with… or being carried by."

"Lead the way."

ooo

Jiraiya, Tsunade, Shizune, and Tonton knew something was wrong the moment the gates of Konoha came in sight. It was only early evening, but the gates were already tightly shut and there were more guards posted than there should be in times of peace.

"Something's happened," Jiraiya sighed as he adjusted the unconscious ninja that was slung over his shoulder and started towards the gate.

Tsunade frowned and shook her head. "I never should have let you talk me into this."

Jiraiya ignored her as he neared the gate and stared up at it.

"Who goes there?" a suspicious voice demanded from above. There was a noticeable, though hardly overwhelming, spike in killer intent.

"Jiraiya with Tsunade and Shizune."

There was a brief pause and then the gates began to open. "We've been waiting for you," the ninja from above told him. "Hokage-sama wants to see you as soon as possible."

Tsunade was next to Jiraiya now, watching the gates open with visible trepidation. "I let you talk me into coming back and now I'm just going to get sucked into another war," she grumbled.

"You're not getting sucked into anything," Jiraiya told her. "You're here to meet Naruto and that's it. Anything more is up to you, but I won't hold it against you if you leave again… well," he smiled, "not too much, anyway."

"Fine, let's get this over with so I can get out of here," Tsunade said as they headed towards the Tower.

Jiraiya watched the hurrying of the ninja around them and noted the slightly frightened looks in the faces of some of the villagers. "The sooner, the better," he agreed.

o

o

A/N: These two weeks just flew by, didn't they… well, not so much for me, but such is life. It's actually sort of a good thing that I told you all I was only going to be updating once every other week since my internet connection died on my last week and was only fixed yesterday. I couldn't have updated even if I'd had the time to write the chapter!

I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. It was a bit of a precursor to what is to come in the next couple (two or three is all, I think) as Team Seven tracks down Naruto. I actually wanted to get them really going on the hunt in this chapter (rather than at the end of it), but it just felt too rushed to me. Having them slowly come to the realization that something was wrong felt better… also, it makes me feel more like I'm writing a manga since I have a whole chapter were stuff happens, but none of it was what you were really _wanting_ to happen. Kind of reminds me of the most recent chapter of Bleach where stuff seems to happen, but at the same time, _nothing_ really happens!

Thanks for all the reviews. The last chapter was almost the most reviewed chapter thus far (with 147 reviews, it was second only to the chapter where it was revealed that Orochimaru wasn't the Grass genin which had 148)! I'm glad everyone seems happy with the twist in Rin's character. I tried to reply to most everyone, but, like I said, my internet connection went down and that was the end of that. So if you reviewed and I didn't reply, just know that I appreciate it. If you had a question that didn't get answered, ask again and I'll be sure to get you this time (I don't remember there being any in the ones I couldn't reply to, but I might have missed one). Thanks again and please review and let me know what you thought of this one.

Happy Birthday GoldenKitsuneHime13 (I'm pretty sure you said that this chapter would be like a birthday present for you, hopefully it was a good one).

Shikon no Jutsu – "Dead Soul Technique" causes a corpse to be temporarily reanimated. Kabuto uses this as a diversion to facilitate his escape from Kakashi when he is cornered in Sasuke's hospital room. It was probably a bit of a stretch to have Rin use it on Naruto here, but we'll call it a "modified version" to excuse that.

Uuhei – This is the actual name for Kakashi's dog with the bandages. Apparently they all have names so, as with the Third's name, I'll eventually be going back and making the needed corrections. It's kind of hard keeping up with all of the new info that keeps coming out about the characters! I wish they were just named from the beginning, but perhaps there was a reason for showing the dogs over two years ago and only now naming them…


	39. Chapter 38

Chapter 38

o

A/N: There will be a bit of talk about "yako" and "kitsune" towards the end of the chapter. You'll probably get the gist from the context, but "kitsune" is the Japanese word for "fox" and "yako" is a Japanese word for "outsider fox." In the myths about kitsune, there are good foxes (zenko) and bad/mischievous foxes (yako). I probably butcher the legends a bit, but it should be about as accurate as wikipedia will let me be…

o

The journey from Konoha to Suna was a fairly long one. At top speed it took about three days to travel from one to the other. At walking pace, it was closer to a week. With several elderly advisors to the Wind Country daimyo in their group, the contingent from Suna was forced to walk and most were not very happy about it.

Gaara was not one of the ones who was annoyed by the pace. With all of the sand he was carrying, it was far more difficult for him to keep up with everyone than it was for those who were less encumbered. He could, of course, do it – for long periods of time, no less – but it wore him down and he was irritable when he was tired.

Truth be told, he was irritable all of the time, he supposed.

He wasn't going to be like that anymore, though. He had a friend, a real friend; his life was different from what it had been just one day earlier or so he was telling himself.

He definitely didn't want to go back to the way things had been. He'd had an epiphany during his match with Naruto; he could now clearly see the pain that he'd been living in and the desperation that he'd shown to try to escape it in whatever way he could. Naruto had shown him a new way, a better way, and he was going to try it…

If only he could figure out how.

Gaara wished that the Kazekage hadn't been in such a hurry to leave Konoha. He could have used the extra time to talk with Naruto about what he was supposed to do now. He'd spent a long time drowning in the darkness, now that he'd seen the light he was aware of what he wanted but unsure of how to get it.

Naruto would have known and would have happily helped Gaara understand how to make the changes so that he wouldn't have to go back to that darkness; they were friends, after all.

It occurred to Gaara at that moment that his friendship with Naruto would not be enough for what he really desired. They were separated by a vast distance that would preclude any sort of constant communication. He supposed they could write letters to each other, but Gaara had never been a letter-writer and wasn't sure that he could bring himself to become one. They were friends, but their friendship would mostly be the simple knowledge that there was someone in the world who understood their lives, and cared for them all the same. It would be knowing that someone acknowledged their existence and wanted them to keep existing despite the monsters within them. Gaara would know that even if he couldn't see Naruto, he had someone walking with him, staying beside him no matter what.

_"Those who always stay beside you, if you make them important to you… they will always watch over you with love…"_

Gaara's uncle on his mother's side, Yashamaru, had said those words once, long ago, when he and Gaara were discussing pain and love.

_"You were never loved… this is it, please die…"_

And those were words Yashamaru had said only a few hours later when he tried to assassinate Gaara – at the Kazekage's command – and paid for it with his life.

Gaara could feel the pain of that night and every other night and day since the day he was born. It was still there. He wanted to be different, but the pain didn't care. What Naruto was giving him was more than Gaara had ever had, but he didn't think it would be enough to keep him from the dark loneliness.

He turned his head and looked at Temari who was walking next to him. She had several friends, though she rarely spent much time with them. She was the smartest of the Kazekage's three children and Gaara had once been told that her genius sometimes created a distance between herself and her peers. Still, she was smart and had some experience, she would know how to make friends… she could even _be_ a friend.

Her eyes shifted towards him and a strange, but unpleasantly familiar, expression came over her face. "Do you need something, Gaara?"

Gaara was quiet for a moment, still looking at her, and then said, "You fought well in your matches." He hadn't been sure what to say, but it seemed a safe subject and it gave him a chance to compliment her, which people probably liked. He wasn't so naive as to think that they would become friends as soon as he said something nice to her, but he hoped that he could at least start some sort of conversation and _that_ could lead to her becoming his friend… or at least not being so afraid of him.

Temari frowned, her eyes shifting from side to side as she tried to come up with an explanation for why he would say such a thing. "Uh… thanks. You… you too."

Gaara waited for her to say anything more, but that seemed all she was capable of. What followed was an awkward and uncomfortable silence that Gaara didn't like it one bit.

He turned to the other side to look at Kankuro. "Uzumaki Naruto was a strong opponent, but you did well against him."

Kankuro didn't look down at Gaara, but instead looked over the top of his head at Temari who was closely watching Gaara's second attempt at normal conversation in less than a minute. He made a strange face that seemed to convey his confusion to her, while apparently ignoring the fact that Gaara was walking right next to him.

Gaara's jaw clenched for a second. He did _not_ want to be ignored while he was trying to reach out to them. He let a slow breath out through his nose and forced his muscles to relax. It wasn't their fault, he reminded himself; they couldn't understand what he'd gone through and how he was trying to change. He'd spent years threatening to kill them, he couldn't expect them to realize that he was trying to be different and just pretend that none of the past had happened.

He looked down at the ground and said, "I'm… sorry… for how I've treated you." With his eyes turned down, he couldn't see the still more bewildered looks passing over his head, but he rightly suspected they were there.

"Uh, don't… um, worry about it," Kankuro replied in a confused, voice. He was probably only dimly aware of the words he was saying.

"Gaara, are you alright?" Temari asked, sounding a little concerned.

Gaara looked up at her and tried to give her a thankful smile. The look on her face told him he wasn't very successful, but she didn't look away from him and that was something. "Yes," he told her, "maybe for the first time in a long time."

"Gaara is mistaken," their father said from just in front of them, though he did not look back. "Kankuro and Temari, you did _not_ fight well. You were an embarrassment to me and all of Suna." The Kazekage turned his head so he could look over his shoulder at Gaara and added, "You were the most disappointing of all of them."

Gaara closed his eyes and looked away. Those eyes, he'd seen them so many times from so many people. They told him that he should disappear. It had been a while since his father had really looked at him with those eyes. Not since the last of the assassins was crushed within Gaara's sands. Not since he decided that Gaara was the sort of weapon that he could mold into a fine point and then use against his enemies.

A gentle hand touched Gaara's shoulder. He opened his eyes and looked at it in surprise, and then he looked up at the owner of the hand. Temari wasn't facing him, but her eyes shifted towards him and a small encouraging smile spread across her lips and then instantly vanished before anyone else could notice it.

Something warm spread through Gaara's chest and the muscles in his cheeks suddenly seemed to long to pull his lips back in a smile of his own.

"To have the three of you defeated by a nobody…" the Kazekage continued. "All of your training… what a waste of our resources."

"He wasn't a nobody," Gaara replied, his voice cold. The warm feeling was gone, replaced by a much more familiar emotion.

The Kazekage snorted. "Of course, I'd forgotten about the _famous_ Uzumaki clan with all of their legendary ninja. He's a nobody and all three of you were beaten handily by him. At the very least you could have killed him for his stupidity, Gaara, but even that was beyond you." He shook his head and then said, "Make sure you three clean thoroughly before we get back to Suna, I don't want your shame stinking up the house."

One of the jounin traveling next to the Kazekage suddenly seemed to stumble and a confused look came over his face. He brushed his fingers through the dark hair that hung down over his right eye and then rubbed his scraggly goatee with the other hand.

The Kazekage looked at him strangely and then turned back to Gaara. "That was childish. Yuura-san has done nothing to you, if you feel like taking out your frustrations, do so on the one with whom the blame lies: yourself."

Gaara started to protest, but before he could Yuura spoke up. "Forgive me, Kazekage-sama, it was not Gaara-sama's fault. I've simply been neglecting my sleep of late and wasn't paying attention to the road. It was my fault entirely."

The Kazekage narrowed his eyes at the jounin, but then shrugged and let the matter drop.

"Do not trouble yourself over the state of your house when you return," Yuura added. "You will never smell any shame there ever again."

The Kazekage frowned, "What's that supposed to mean?"

Without any sign of premeditation or even the slightest hint of killer intent, Yuura grabbed a kunai and plunged it into the Kazekage's chest. The Kazekage stumbled back, reaching weakly for the weapon and then looked up at Yuura in surprise.

"Sasori-sama sends his regards," the jounin said in a calm voice, his face strangely expressionless.

At that moment, several ninja from Iwagakure seemed to rise up out of the road, their fingers already forming seals.

ooo

Sasuke's world had had a sole focus for many years. Ever since _that_ night, his life had been pointed in one direction: Itachi. Everything was about him, everything was geared towards reaching him, he was always right there, the focal point. That had changed, however, when he was placed on Team Seven. Suddenly, his focus had shifted, had broadened. Itachi was still there, still in the middle even, but he wasn't the sole focus.

At the moment, he wasn't even on Sasuke's map.

Nothing mattered except reaching next milestone that would get him that much closer to whoever had captured his friend. The next branch, the next hill, a small rock formation; all of them were stepping stones towards catching up and saving Naruto.

He was going to save his precious person this time. _That_ night, he hadn't been able to help his family. He'd been too late to be of any use and too weak to do anything but cry and get knocked out.

He wasn't weak anymore.

This time would be different. It _had_ to be different. Naruto was his family now, if he failed his family a second time…

No, he couldn't even consider that possibility. He was going to save Naruto and that was that. Nothing would stop him.

He hit the next branch, the chakra in his feet catching hold until he was ready to spring to the next one. It didn't totally require the skills learned in the tree climbing exercise to work, but those skills made it easier and that reminded him of his time training with Naruto and served to focus him even more. His legs flexed and he made his next leap, easily jumping the two and a half meters to the next tree branch and then the next and the one after that.

He let his eyes drift to Kakashi and Sakura who were right next to them. Sakura's green eyes were focused straight ahead, her jaw set. She was just as focused on getting Naruto back as he was. Kakashi, on the other hand, was looking out of the corner of his eye at…

Sasuke leaped to the next branch. He wasn't sure who Kakashi was looking at. It could be Sakura or it could be the dog, Uuhei, or it could even be at him. They were all in that line of sight.

"Sakura-chan," Kakashi said answering Sasuke's question as if he were reading his mind, "There's something we need to talk about before we catch up with them."

Sakura didn't look to the side or give any physical hint that her attention wasn't focused entirely on what lay ahead.

"Rin may be one of the ones who took him."

Sakura nearly missed the branch she was jumping to and had to make a quick hop to the next one to keep from falling. "What?!" she demanded, coming briefly to a stop before hurrying on.

Kakashi's visible eye looked down as he said, "We had a… _source_ who claimed that she was a traitor and she was seen with Naruto just before he disappeared."

Sakura shook her head vigorously, almost as if she was trying to shake away the thoughts. "It's _just_ a coincidence," she said firmly. "Rin-sensei would never do something like this. I know she's with Naruto, but that's because she was kidnapped too. She… she _couldn't_ have done something like this."

"I hope you're right," Kakashi replied, "but Naruto's life is at stake. If she's with the ones who have done this, we can't afford to hesitate regardless of our feelings for her."

"Her scent is separate from the others," Uuhei offered. "Naruto's is right on top of someone else's, but hers is a little farther away. She's traveling by her own power."

"We don't even know that she's traveling with them," Sakura pointed out. "She might be tracking them too, trying to _save_ Naruto. Even if she is with them, what if it's just a trick to make us think that she's a traitor? What if we attack her and they're just using her somehow? She might be under genjutsu or something like Shintenshin no Jutsu for all we know."

"Or she might be doing it of her own free will," Sasuke said, his jaw flexing. "We'll be sure to ask her once Naruto's safe… _not_ before."

If Rin was with them, helping them, there might be trouble. Sasuke knew that, generally speaking, kunoichi were not as physically powerful as their male counterparts, nor did they have the chakra levels of male ninja, but that was only a generalization. Even if it was true about Rin, there were plenty of ways to be deadly without using brute force or enormously powerful jutsu. Plus, she was Kakashi's teammate; there was no telling how strong she might be.

She'd certainly had a lot to do with Sakura's huge growth during the past month.

"You don't know her," Sakura insisted again. "Rin-sensei would never do something like this. She's a good person…. I know it."

"We might be finding out soon," Uuhei said, looking back at her. "We're catching up."

ooo

"Stop," Jirobo said as he landed on a large branch and pulled Naruto's limp form off of his shoulder.

"What's wrong, dumb-shit?" Tayuya asked as she landed next to him. "Don't tell me you're fucking tired already."

"Stop cussing," Jirobo said with a frown.

"Why don't you fucking make me you fat ass piece of shit?"

Their argument was about to escalate when Rin landed between them and looked down at Naruto. "What's the meaning of this?"

"He groaned?" Jirobo told her quickly.

Rin's eyes widened and she knelt next to Naruto, running her hand lightly over his chest and checking his pulse. He was sweating profusely as his body burned impossibly fast through the drugs she'd injected him with. "You're right," she said after a moment. "I underestimated it."

"What's that supposed to mean?!" Kidomaru demanded.

"It means I've never drugged a monster before, so I can only guess at what it will take!" Rin snapped.

"Do you have more?" Sakon asked calmly.

Rin rolled her eyes in annoyance. "Of course, but I can't give it as much as before."

"Why not?"

"I don't know what this will do to it. If Orochimaru wants it alive and functional, we have to be careful. Too much and I could destroy the brain." She thought for a moment and then added, "Perhaps I used too much in the first place anyway. If the demon manifests the more Naruto is suppressed, maybe drugging it up to the gills causes the healing factor to burn through the drugs that much quicker."

"Do what you have to," Sakon told her. "We don't want him waking up." He looked at Tayuya and said, "Do you have the seal still? We need to place it before they have a chance to notice he's gone anyway."

"Of course I have it," Tayuya sneered, pulling a small piece of paper from her bag. "On his chest work?"

"Orochimaru-sama didn't say, but I'm sure that will be fine."

As Tayuya secured the paper to Naruto's chest, Rin looked at it curiously. "What's that for?" The seals on it were far more complex than a normal paper seal or exploding tag. She didn't know a whole lot about fuuin jutsu, other than the basics she'd learned from Minato which he in turn had learned from his master, Jiraiya. Seals were just something where knowing the bare-bone basics was more than plenty to get you by.

This was not bear-bone basics. Actually, it looked a little like the seals used with a summoning jutsu.

"Orochimaru-sama didn't say, except that it would keep the prisoner from disappearing on us," Sakon told her with a shrug.

Rin gave the seal another critical look, but still couldn't divine its purpose and decided that she didn't really care. She checked Naruto's vitals once more and then pressed a needle into his neck. It would not carry as much of the tranquilizer as it had the first time, but it would still keep him under. It was possible that the reduced levels would actually keep him unconscious _longer_ by keeping his human side closer to the surface to help suppress the demon side and the extra healing it carried with it.

If that didn't work, she would just have to inject the full load into him as often as it took to keep him under. If Orochimaru received a vegetable, he would have to get over it.

ooo

Tsunade did not want to be here. She didn't want to be in this room. She didn't want to be with these people. She didn't want to be in this building. She didn't even want to be in this village. Truth be told, she didn't even want to be in the whole damn Fire Country, but it was easier to be there than else where because some people still recognized her and held grudges from past wars.

She could have lived a long, semi-happy life without ever setting foot in Konohagakure again, but for some reason here she was. In the village, in the Hokage Tower, in this room with advisors and village council members watching her and smiling as if she were here to serve them. And why?

Tsunade wasn't even sure she knew the answer. Was it because Jiraiya wanted her to come back or because she was curious about Minato's son or because some part of her sort of missed the village her grandfather and granduncle had built? Probably a little of all of that.

She did her best not to listen as her old sensei, Sarutobi Hiruzen, explained the situation the village was facing. It was important that she remember that she didn't care, because she didn't. She'd given more for this village than it deserved, more than she could bear to give up. She wouldn't give it any more. In fact, she was only waiting for the Third to pause so she could explain that to everyone and then get the hell out.

She would meet Naruto, hear whatever it was that had Jiraiya so interested, and then she'd wash her hands of the whole thing.

"We are currently awaiting word from the initial reconnaissance team, and after that we will begin making what preparations we can. I have also sent a message to the Raikage. It is unlikely, but perhaps there's been some sort of misunderstanding that can be dealt with before more blood is shed."

The old man paused, letting out a sigh of resignation that told Tsunade he didn't expect this to be something that could be talked out and brushed under the rug. Blood would be shed for this attack, lots of it.

"Where's Naruto?" Jiraiya asked before Tsunade could point out the fact that she was only here as a civilian and didn't care about their war other than wanting to get as far from it as possible.

A strange hush fell over the room full of self-important blowhards, obviously something was wrong and Naruto's name was attached to it. Tsunade's eyes instantly went to Hiruzen's and she watched carefully as he tilted his head slightly to the right and looked down before saying, "We should talk about this privately when the meeting is adjourned."

"Something's happened to him," Tsunade observed. She sighed and then said, "Well, that's that… I'm out of here."

"What?!" several voices demanded at once.

Tsunade had to fight the urge to smile. A war starts up and suddenly two of the Sannin show up on their doorstep, of course they thought that she was back to help them fight. Some were probably even trying to think of ways to take credit for her arrival. Now they'd have to change their stories to find a way to blame someone else for her unwillingness to help. Were she not totally opposed to the idea, it might be funny to wait for them to start making their little moves and then suddenly change her mind and help out just to spite them.

It just wasn't funny enough to be worth it.

"I didn't come here to fight for you," she told them flatly. "I came here to see Uzumaki Naruto. If something's happened to him, if he's dead, or on a mission, or whatever, then my reason for being here is gone… and so am I."

Jiraiya put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed hard enough to let her know that he would stop her if she tried to walk away before they had answers. Tsunade considered calling his bluff, but decided it wasn't worth the hassle. Starting a fight in the conference room would only give the councilors more time to come up with ways to keep her in the village. The quicker Jiraiya got his answers, the quicker they could leave. That was what was important.

Hiruzen let out a soft sigh and sat heavily in his chair. Tsunade was suddenly struck by how old and tired he appeared. The job of Hokage was not meant to be held by someone as old as him. It was a young to middle aged man's job. He should have been out long ago… and he had been, until Kyuubi attacked and Minato died. She was sure that he was still up to the task, but clearly it was wearing him down. He needed another successor to show up.

A part of her wondered who would be dumb enough to take the job.

"Uzumaki Naruto was kidnapped today, around sunset as near as we can tell."

"_Allegedly_ kidnapped," one of the councilmen was quick to clarify.

Jiraiya ignored the clarification. "Who did you send after him?"

The Third folded his hands in front of him. "Kakashi and the remainder of Team Seven are in pursuit as we speak."

"You only sent a jounin and two genin?!"

"It was all Kakashi accepted," Hiruzen replied with a small nod. "He believes that Rin is one of the kidnappers…"

Jiraiya frowned in confusion. "Who's Rin?"

"She was a member of Minato's team."

The white haired ninja's eyes widened. "Cute, little Rin?"

"Kakashi wanted to 'keep things in the family.'"

For a moment, Jiraiya didn't say anything and then he turned and started heading towards the door. "Do you know which way they went?"

"Not officially, but if we are correct about who is pulling the strings, they will be heading north."

Jiraiya shook his head in resignation; he knew who the Third was talking about. "Orochimaru."

Hiruzen nodded.

There were gasps around the room; apparently this was the first time most of them had heard this piece of information. Several council members demanded to know where such information had come from and why they hadn't been briefed sooner. The Third ignored them, keeping all of his attention on his two former students.

Jiraiya's Adam's apple bobbed once and then, in a soft voice, he said, "I'll go get him. Kakashi's right, this is family business."

Hiruzen closed his eyes and gave them a small nod. "Be careful."

Jiraiya actually smiled and winked at the old man. "Don't worry; I'll have the best medic-nin the world's ever seen with me. What could go wrong?"

Tsunade opened her mouth to protest – as did a number of council members who didn't think sending Kakashi, the last of the Uchiha, _and_ two of the Sannin after someone like Naruto was a very good use of resources – but Jiraiya simply gripped her shoulder a little tighter and steered her right out of the room. He didn't even bother looking at those who tried to argue with the plan.

Shizune and Tonton were waiting for them in the hall; both looked worried, though it was hard to guess what either of them had to be worried about. Certainly they knew she could handle a few of the Hokage's personal advisors and some village council members, didn't they?

"I'm _not_ going with you," she told Jiraiya as the doors closed behind them. "I said I'd come meet Naruto. I kept my end of the bargain, but he isn't here. I'm off the hook."

Jiraiya was already walking down the hall, his eyes set and his long strides purposeful. For some reason, Tsunade found herself hurrying to keep up with him. "I need your help with this," he said as they began walking down the steps.

"I don't care."

"Yes, you do. Too much for your own good, maybe, but you care."

"Not about him and not about the village."

Jiraiya came to a sudden stop and stared down at her. She defiantly looked up at him, daring him to call her a liar. She'd forgotten how much taller he was than her – over thirty centimeters, she estimated – and she had to admit that with his eyes blazing the way they were at that moment, he was quite intimidating… or he would have been if he wasn't still plain ol' obnoxious Jiraiya who used to try to ask her out on dates all the time and sneak peeks of her chest every chance he got. He couldn't intimidate her; he'd never been able to and never would.

Because intimidation requires fear and he'd never done anything to make her afraid of him. _For_ him, maybe, but never _of_ him.

He stared at her for several seconds and then closed his eyes and shook his head. "Do what you want," he sighed. "If you've become the sort of person who could let someone like Naruto fall into someone like Orochimaru's hands… then my friend is dead and I'd rather not look at you any more and be reminded of another of my failures."

Tsunade took a step back, almost physically recoiling from the contempt… and sadness… in his voice.

She tried to tell herself that it didn't matter what he said, that she'd gone years without seeing him or caring what he thought of her. What difference did it make if he thought poorly of her now? She could walk out the gate and never think of him again.

But the problem was, she knew that she _would_ think of him again. She'd wonder if he was okay. She'd wonder if she'd done the right thing. She'd wonder what her little brother, Nawaki, would think. Nawaki had always like Jiraiya and had looked up to him as one of his idols – Tsunade had often wished that he'd looked up to Jiraiya a little _less_ in some areas. He would have taken Jiraiya's side this time, loudly and with a couple of curse words just to make his point. The man she'd thought she was going to marry, Dan, would probably have sided with Jiraiya as well, though he would have done so far more gently than Nawaki.

She'd spent a long time trying to forget all of this, to forget all of them. Jiraiya, Nawaki, Dan, Konoha… all of them were painful to her, too painful to live with, too painful to remember. She should never have come back. The memories would be harder to bury a second time.

Jiraiya gave her a second to reply, but when she didn't; he turned and continued on his way without even giving her a second look.

Tsunade watched him go, not sure what to do. She _didn't_ want to go, but she didn't want him to go by himself either. If Orochimaru was involved, this would be a dangerous mission. If Jiraiya was killed…

"Buhi…"

Tsunade turned to find Shizune and Tonton watching her. Had they been there the whole time?

"Buhi," Tonton said again, one of her brows arched expectantly.

"Oh shut up," Tsunade growled, rolling her eyes. "I was going to go after him…"

Whether they thought she was lying or not, neither said anything about it. Tsunade wasn't sure if she had been lying herself.

"Thank you Tsunade-sama," Shizune whispered as they hurried down the stairs.

"Don't thank me until you get out of this alive," Tsunade sighed. It had been a lie before, she realized at that moment. She _didn't_ want to do this and she wouldn't have gone after him. Jiraiya could have taken care of himself, and maybe she could have gotten away with not knowing how it all ended.

Not knowing would have been better than looking down the body of another loved one, watching all of that blood seeping out and covering the ground…

ooo

Though no casualties would be coming in for quite some time, Konoha's hospital was already bracing itself for the worst. Rooms were being cleared of those who didn't need any more medical attention and could finish their recovery at home, spare beds were being brought in and set up for the expected overcrowding that was to come, and young staff members were being briefed on what to expect. It was an organized chaos, but chaos none-the-less.

Kaori had been young during the last great war, but not so young as many of the others. She'd only been an apprentice at the time, but no one who worked in a hospital during a war forgot what it was like.

She was one of the older nurses now, used to giving orders and having them followed. Back then she hadn't known which way was up and which was down half the time. Someone would come in, bleeding and nearly dead and she would help her mentors patch them up – or watch them die, as was the case far too often.

She brushed a stray strand of brown hair out of her eyes and peered into the next room on her list. A genin with a sprained ankle looked up at her in surprise as she explained the situation and handed him a pair of crutches. The poor young man was scarcely through the door when three medic-nin – each carrying a fold up cot – hurried in, almost knocking him over in their haste, and began to set up the room to hold more patients.

Kaori watched them work just long enough to be sure that they were leaving enough space between the beds before moving onto the next room. She looked down at her chart and shook her head. This boy should be staying in the hospital longer. They needed his room and his wounds weren't life threatening, but surely they could work around him for another day or two. It wasn't like they were going to be receiving casualties _this_ early… at least, she hoped not.

She knocked softly on the door and stepped inside.

No one was there.

Frowning, Kaori stepped back into the hall, checked the room number and her chart twice and then stepped back in. It was the right room, but it was missing its patient.

"Kiku-san?" she called out to one of the other nurses. "Did you move the patient from room 63 already?"

Kiku shook her head, "No, Kaori-san, I haven't been in that room all day. Someone else might have, I've been a little distracted."

Kaori nodded in understanding and looked back down at the chart. "Probably just a paperwork mix up. Some of these medic-nin have such bad handwriting, it's a miracle we don't have more mistakes."

She cast one more glance around the inside of the room, in case the patient was hiding for some reason, and then shrugged it off and moved onto the next room. Room 63 was clear, that was all that mattered at the moment.

ooo

Uuhei had just landed on a large branch when he noticed the change in the scent. His lips pulled back and he bared his teeth as he softly growled, "Kakashi."

Kakashi only spared his dog the briefest of glances. He didn't need Uuhei to give him any more sign than that to know what was about to come. He reached up and pushed his hitai-ate so that it was sitting properly on his head, exposing the red iris of his Sharingan. "We've nearly caught up," he explained to Sasuke and Sakura. "When we get there, your objective in Naruto and nothing else. You get him, whatever his condition, and you get him back to the village. Don't stop, don't fight, just take him and run."

"Sensei…" Sakura started to say, but he silenced her with a shake of his head.

"No, those are your orders and you _have_ to follow them. We don't know exactly what we're up against, but we got a tip about ninja from the Sound being part of some sort of conspiracy. We've had our eyes on them since you passed the second test. The intelligence isn't perfect, but we know roughly who they are and what they can do… and I used to know Rin really well. I'll hold them off and act as the diversion; you will take Naruto and get him out of here." He let out a slow breath and shook his head again, "If you value Naruto as your friend and teammate, you'll follow my orders. He's the priority here." He looked at Uuhei and added, "You've done enough at this point, head back to Konoha and report our location to Hokage-sama."

Sakura started to say something again, but closed her mouth before any sound came out. There was no sense in arguing any more.

Sasuke wasn't worried about arguing at all. He just brought his hands together and activated his own Sharingan.

UUhei nodded and veered off to the side, circling back towards Konoha.

"I'm going ahead," Kakashi told Sasuke and Sakura, "keep a careful watch for traps, but catch up as quickly as you can. I'll make sure they don't get any farther along." He didn't wait for a confirmation; he just picked up speed and was out of sight in only a few seconds.

Things were going to be trickier than simply grabbing Naruto and running back to Konoha, he realized, but he hoped that his three genin would be gone before he got to the tricky part. He wasn't too worried about the four Sound-nin – though there was always the chance that one of them would be stronger than he or she had let on – but Rin was another matter.

She was good, or she had been the last time he'd seen her in action. The Fourth Hokage had trained her; there was no way she couldn't have ended up being really good. It had been several years since he'd seen her in action, but he doubted her skills had diminished much despite becoming a full time medic and leaving the village. She just wasn't the sort of person who would let herself slip that much.

But he'd always been better than her, and not just a little either. The last time they'd spared, he'd been able to score hits on her almost at will. She was good, maybe even great, he was just better.

If he fought her today, he would have the opportunity to kill her. He wasn't sure if he could do it, but with four other enemies to deal with, he wouldn't have time to think twice about it. If she was vulnerable, he'd have to put her down without hesitating.

He didn't want Sakura there to see that. He didn't want Sasuke to see him struggle to make the choice. He didn't want Naruto to be there if he couldn't bring himself to do it.

Despite his thoughts being turned inward, his body recognized movement in the trees ahead and suddenly he was completely focused on what was in front of him. Just as he'd thought, there were four of them and Rin. The fact that she was moving of her own free will crushed the last of his hopes that it was all some sort of mistake. She was there, she was helping them.

And now he had to try to kill her.

"Forgive me, Obito," he whispered as he picked up more speed.

In less than a second, he'd cut their lead in half. Another second and he was right on top of them. The larger one didn't even see him coming before Naruto was out of his arms while Kakashi's foot slammed into the side of his head, sending him tumbling to the ground below. The four remaining members of the ground heard the crash and turned just as he set Naruto down on the branch to wait for Sasuke and Sakura to pick him up.

"What the fu—" the girl started to say, before being interrupted by Kakashi's hand grabbing hold of her hair and yanking her backwards as his foot swept her feet out from under her. She was in the air for all of a half-second before his free hand came down on her stomach, slamming her down onto the branch which flipped her around as she went crashing to the forest floor.

"Stop!" Rin yelled as the two remaining Sound-nin prepared to fight Kakashi.

No one listened to her.

Kakashi went after the gray-haired boy next. The boy was ready for him and, as Kakashi leapt after him, he brought his foot up to deliver a vicious kick. It was impressive that he could follow Kakashi's movements at this speed, and even more impressive that he could do so fast enough to get a kick aimed at just the right spot, but Kakashi was still quicker. He brought his feet down early, using chakra to hold him to the side of the branch while he bent his knees so the Sound-nin's right foot sailed over his shoulder. Kakashi pivoted on his left foot, bringing his arm up so that he caught the younger ninja by the leg as he swung around to drive his right elbow into the boy's back.

Impressively, the younger ninja was able to get his arm up and behind him to absorb most of the force of the blow, though that didn't help him when Kakashi flexed his arm around the trapped leg and tossed the boy against the nearest tree.

Kakashi heard a crunch behind him and spun quickly, drawing a kunai and bringing it up in time to pierce the hand of the final Sound-nin who was trying to bring one of his – oddly enough – six arms down on Kakashi's head. The Sound-nin grunted in pain, but another of his arms was already moving to deliver an uppercut when suddenly he was jerked back off his feet by someone behind him.

The multi-armed ninja looked up in surprise at Rin, who scowled down at him as she pressed her foot against his throat and pressed down lightly. "Orochimaru promised me that Kakashi and his team would not be killed," she firmly. "That's a promise that I won't accept being broken."

The two allies continued to glare at each other until the sound of chirping birds reached their ears and then Rin looked over to find Kakashi holding lightening in his hand, the blue light creating strange and foreboding shadows on his face. "Are you going to kill me now, Kakashi-kun?" Rin asked softly.

"I told myself that I didn't need a reason from you," Kakashi told her as he took a step forward and lifted the Chidori up near his face, chasing all of the shadows away. "I figured that if you were really working with them, I should kill you first and ask questions later… but I need answers. So I'll ask once and you better answer fast because it will probably be the last thing you do. Why?"

Her lips pulled back in a smirk and she shook her head. "Why? I should ask you the same thing. Why are you siding with a demon over your own teammate? Why are you letting it run around the village like it's actually a person you can trust? Why aren't you avenging the Fourth's death?"

"Naruto isn't a demon," Kakashi told her firmly. "He's not the Kyuubi."

"And what is the Kyuubi? Nothing but a kitsune, a yako. Mischievous, able to take and hold human form, clever… sound like anyone you know? Maybe it was put inside of Naruto's body and maybe it wasn't, but whatever body it's using, you can't honestly believe that something as powerful as Kyuubi hasn't taken control already."

"The seal is still in place, it can't get out."

"If it's even a real seal."

Kakashi shook his head. He'd heard this sort of nonsense before, particularly when Naruto got old enough to start pulling pranks and began to make more of a nuisance of himself in an effort to get some sort of attention. Some people really believed it; others went along with it because they were hurt and angry and needed something to lash out at. No one had ever been so dumb as to temp the Hokage's wrath and overtly hurt Naruto, but the ideas had been there. To hear it coming out of Rin's mouth was sickening.

"You knew Minato and Kushina, had could you possibly think their child would be a demon?"

"You're making excuses for it," Rin pointed out. "It's Kushina's baby, so it can't be a demon. Minato-sensei sacrificed himself to seal the Kyuubi away, so he couldn't have failed. It acts sweet sometimes, so it can't be waiting to put a knife in my back."

"So this is what it's all about? You think Naruto _might_ be the Kyuubi, so you're willing to give him to Orochimaru?"

"Orochimaru has promised to bring Obito back," Rin whispered. "I don't care about that thing. It's Konoha's problem, not mine, but if I can trade it for the one person who's ever really loved me… how could I not take the chance?"

"Obito is dead, he can't be brought back."

"Orochimaru can do it. I've seen the research, I've even seen the jutsu in action; he can do it."

"Even if he can, do you think Obito would want you to sacrifice sensei's son to bring him back?"

"I don't care if he wants it or not. I'm the one paying the price, not him. He died trying to save me… because he loved me." She looked at him for a moment and then asked, "Have you ever loved someone like that, Kakashi-kun? Enough to go to any lengths for them? I know you never loved me like that… but has there ever been anyone that you would give your life for that wasn't part of the job? Someone you would sacrifice a mission, your honor, and your life for?"

The Chidori crackled a little more. "Yes, you kidnapped one of them today… and the other two better take their teammate and leave." He called the second part over his shoulder where Uuhei, Sakura and Sasuke were just arriving.

Sakura looked at Kakashi's glowing hand and then at Rin. Her eyes widened in horror as realization struck. "Rin-sensei, you didn't…"

"There are some things that are bigger than you realize, Sakura-chan, and not everything is how it looks. I'm getting something out of it, but I'm also protecting you and the village from that thing."

"_Thing_?" Sakura asked.

"You're a smart girl Sakura-chan, do the math. When was Naruto born? What was happening at that same time… historically speaking."

Sakura frowned for a second and then her head snapped towards Naruto as her mouth fell open. "Kyuubi," she whispered.

"It's sealed inside of him," Kakashi explained quickly. He could see the wheels in her head spinning, putting together little pieces of info and strange oddities about her teammate that she'd noticed since they graduated. "It gives him more chakra than the average person, but _that's_ all. He is still Naruto."

Sakura continued to look at Naruto as Sasuke scooped him up and threw him across his shoulders. "It's really inside of him?" she asked. It almost sounded as if she were in a trance.

"Naruto _is_ the Kyuubi," Rin said. "Inside, outside, all of it is Kyuubi."

"It explains so much," Sakura whispered. "That time I thought he was stabbed in the chest… the awful killer intent… it was all Kyuubi."

"Sakura," Sasuke hissed, looking at her sharply, his eyes narrowing, "it was Naruto. Right now it doesn't matter where his power came from, we have to protect him. Worry about what it means later."

Sakura stepped away from him, shaking her head. "But if he's really… then Rin-sensei is right. It would be better to get it out of the village. It's like you said, Naruto is just an idiot… only now it's worse than that."

"What are you talking about?! He's Naruto!"

Sakura jumped lightly from the branch and landed next to Rin. She looked back at Sasuke sadly and shook her head. "You don't see it. He's not Naruto. It's been tricking us from the beginning. When we fought the Collectors, I felt it. That thing, that can't be human. It's a monster."

Rin looked down at Sakura and then up at Kakashi. "Sakura-chan can see it, why can't you?"

Kakashi stared at Sakura. He hadn't seen this coming. He'd known she would take Rin's betrayal hard, but to switch sides, it just wasn't her. How would things go now? Would he have to kill one of his students as well as his former teammate? And what of Sasuke? They were now outnumbered three to one. He could handle most of them, but things were beginning to look grimmer than he'd wanted.

"Please, sensei," Sakura said softly as she reached into her weapon pouch and drew a kunai, "just surrender. Naruto is coming with us."

Rin nodded. "How about it, Kakashi-kun? Let's end this without anyone getting hur—"

A blade was suddenly at her throat. "I was talking to you, _sensei_," Sakura whispered in her ear. "If you think I'll let you hurt my friend, no matter what he is, you are sadly mistaken."

Rin sighed. "It was nothing personal, Sakura-chan; someday I hope you'll see that. I trained you as best I could in such a short amount of time, and I really am your friend. I never did anything to deceive you, never lied to you, and I didn't want you hurt, but…" she lifted her foot off of the Sound-nin, "I'm afraid that I need to deliver Naruto or I'll lose my one chance to save the only man who's ever loved me… and that's more important to me than anything else."

In the blink of an eye, her fingers came up and jabbed into Sakura's wrist. Sakura's hand went limp for a second and in that moment, Rin knocked away the kunai and grabbed the kunoichi by the arm, preparing to twist behind her and hold her up as a shield and use her as a hostage. Sakura saw the move coming and twisted her own arm to loosen the hold before kicking out at Rin's stomach. Rin's free hand blocked the kick and pushed Sakura away from her.

Sakura flipped in the air and landed next to Kakashi, who looked down at her and then back at Rin. "It was a good try," he told Sakura, "but next time, let someone know ahead of time."

"I did. I told Sasuke just before I jumped over to her."

"When?"

"When she said Naruto was just an idiot," Sasuke answered for her. "She always defends him when people call him that, she wouldn't change her tone that fast."

"Next time, let _me_ know befor—"

There was a small crunching sound behind them and Kakashi instantly grabbed Sakura and dove forward off of the branch as a large fist passed through the air they'd been occupying only a moment earlier. Kakashi's hand shot out, caught hold of the branch with a good helping of chakra to help his grip and swung the two of them around to the other side. He released Sakura at the spot that would carry her relatively smoothly towards Sasuke and Naruto, and then used the rest of his momentum to speed the kick that he delivered to the back of the head of the largest of the Sound-nin.

It was the second time he'd kicked this particular ninja in the head in the past few minutes, but this time his kick was strangely less effective than the first.  
The Sound-nin turned and glared at Kakashi with yellow eyes underneath an inhuman brow. His skin was a brownish-orange color and his hair, once a strange orange Mohawk, was now long and the color had become more yellow. Large bumps marked his forehead and his shoulders.

"Sasuke, Sakura, get Naruto out of here," Kakashi growled.

"That might be harder than you think," Sasuke called back as he stared down two more of the transformed Sound-nin.

"Don't kill them," Rin said as the four Sounds attacked, "but don't let them escape with the demon either."

o

o

A/N: First of all, let me head off any arguments by asking that you please not complain about the Kazekage being stabbed by a jounin until you see how the whole thing ends in the next chapter. While I am a firm believer in the idea that kage's are perfectly mortal and capable not only of mistakes but of being caught off guard and killed by any schmuck with a weapon and/or jutsu who happens to get lucky, there's more to the scene and you needn't tell me "that's so dumb, a kage would never be killed that easily" only to have it turn out that he wasn't killed or that there were extenuating circumstances in the next chapter. I'm not saying that he _did_ survive here, but… well, read into it what you want, just don't complain about it until you have the whole story. I don't feel like writing "Wait until the next chapter before you go off on me" a hundred times in responses.

Anyway, I'm not sure how I feel about the whole Rin conversation. It just didn't seem strong enough… In fact, it was the only part of the chapter that I had any trouble writing, and is the reason why you didn't get the chapter a little sooner than normal and at least part of the reason why this chapter only got a quick proofreading before going up. This is like the second or third version of the conversation and is easily the one I like best, but it still feels iffy to me. Well, what's done is done. Perhaps after posting this, my head will be a little clearer and I'll be able to go back and get it just the way I want. It wouldn't be the first time that had happened.

Thanks for all of the reviews. It blows my mind to see how many people from all over the world are reading this. It's just crazy. So, thank you so much and please leave a review and let me know what you thought of the chapter.

Shintenshin no Jutsu – "Mind Body Switch Technique." Ino's favorite jutsu. It allows the user to take control of the target's body, controlling them completely.


	40. Chapter 39

Chapter 39

o

A/N: This chapter is the longest of any chapter I've written so far (30 pages on MSWord – not including the Author's Note at the end). It's about 3K words longer than the previous longest which was only that long because it had the alternate Gaara meeting scene at the end of it. If you like them like that, you're welcome. If you don't... sorry, it couldn't be helped. Plus, it makes for a good excuse for my very very late update. I should be better next time around.

o

Jiraiya had barely stepped through the doors of the Hokage Tower when he brought his fingers together, forming seals and was about to press his hand to the ground when he noticed the sound of hurried footsteps behind him. A tight smile formed on his lips. Despite her coldness towards everything, she wasn't as far gone as he'd feared.

Perhaps Naruto wasn't completely wrong about her.

"Are you going to help me, or are you here because those doors were the closest exit?" he asked, knowing the answer. If she was really planning on leaving the village, she would have taken a different exit so he wouldn't have a chance to try to talk her into it a second time.

"I told you I'd meet Naruto, so I'll do it," Tsunade replied with a sigh. Jiraiya wasn't looking at her, but he suspected her hands where on her shapely hips. "This doesn't mean that I'm staying in the village or anything like that. I help you, meet him, and then I'm gone."

"I can live with that, but after step two, you might have trouble going through with step three. There's something about that kid…" He reformed the seals and slammed his hand down. The familiar dark seals spread out from his palm and there was a small puff of smoke as Fukasaku – affectionately known as "Pa" – appeared before them.

The toad looked up at Jiraiya and smiled. "Hello, Jiraiya-chan," he said as he stroked his little white goatee, "how nice of you to call me." He looked around curiously and then asked, "You called me and you're not fighting anyone? How unusual. Did that kid tell you I wanted to speak to you?"

"What kid?"

Pa frowned thoughtfully. "Eh, I guess he never told me his name, but he was a little blond-haired kid. Looked just like Minato-chan, now that I think about it. He needed me to get rid of the natural energy in his body. The dummy was trying to use senjutsu for some reason." The old toad looked disapprovingly up at Jiraiya and said, "I thought you understood that you weren't supposed to be teaching that, boy. You can't even do it perfectly yourself!"

Jiraiya's eyes widened. "Naruto can use senjutsu?!"

Now Pa looked really confused. "You didn't teach him? Then how the heck did he learn it?"

Jiraiya looked up from the toad and stared out across the plaza towards the tall gates of the village, but his eyes weren't seeing anything. He and Naruto hadn't talked about this sort of thing much, but for him to be able to use senjutsu at his age (or _physical_ age, anyway) was incredible. Even for him to be able to do it at the age that he considered himself to be was pretty impressive. He should have known better than to do it without Fukasaku and his wife, Shima, since senjutsu didn't really work without them and channeling natural energy was dangerous if done on ones own, but still…

"How could he possibly have learned something like that if you didn't teach him?" Tsunade demanded, bringing Jiraiya back to the present.

"It's a long story," Jiraiya said with a shake of his head, "and it doesn't matter right now." He knelt down so he was close to being on the same level as Fukasaku and said, "Pa, Naruto's been kidnapped. I need you to go back to Myobokuzan and then summon him there."

Fukasaku eyes lit up and his mouth spread into a wide grin. "That's pretty clever," he said with a nod of his head, his voice conveying how impressed he was with the plan. "Give me two minutes and then call me back. After that, it will just be a matter of summoning him here." Without another word, he vanished in a puff of smoke.

"So what now?" Tsunade asked as Jiraiya stood back up.

"Now we start tracking Kakashi's team. If Orochimaru is involved, they're going to need backup." He, Tsunade, and Shizune – with Tonton in her arms – leapt onto the nearest rooftop and began hurrying towards the gate. "Good thing we have that pig of yours, eh?"

Tsunade shook her head. "Kakashi should have known better than to only take a couple of kids on a mission like this. This sort of thing should have been done by a team of chuunin or better."

Jiraiya shrugged. "He had his reasons, I'm sure. Some things are better left in the family anyway."

"You and Minato always took the idea of these teams being like families too seriously. It just opens you up to pain that isn't necessary."

"You agreed with us, once upon a time," Jiraiya pointed out with a grim smile.

"I was young and stupid."

They reached the wall and went over it without a second's hesitation. "Well, you always called me an idiot; I guess it's no surprise I still think this way."

Once they were on the other side, it only took Tonton a few seconds to find the bodies of the dead ANBU and the scent trails that led away from them. Jiraiya noticed the way Tsunade stiffened and quickly turned away from the sight of the blood splattered on the still-fresh bodies. A part of him had hoped that she would have been over her hemophobia, but obviously that was not the case. When the fighting started, he'd have to keep an eye on her now.

As they leapt from branch to branch, Jiraiya wished that Tsunade would start talking again. He didn't want to have to think about what might happen once they caught up with Kakashi or what would happen if Orochimaru got his hands on someone like Naruto. Unfortunately, either the sight of the blood or some part of their earlier conversation had given her something to think about because she remained silent.

With nothing else to distract him as, his mind ran through the possible scenes awaiting them when they caught up with Naruto's kidnappers. Best case scenario, Kakashi and his team was alive and well and the bad guys were dead, but that was pretty unlikely. More realistically, only Kakashi and Sasuke would still be alive and at least a few of the kidnappers would be dead or injured. And the least pleasant – and still more likely than the scenario in which Kakashi and his genin had killed all of their enemies – possibility, Orochimaru had met up with Naruto's kidnappers and the bodies of Kakashi and his team were already growing cold.

A timer went off in his head, giving him an excuse to turn away from those thoughts as he called a halt and began forming the seals to call back Fukasaku. A second later, the old toad was squatting before him, looking very unsettled.

"I'm sorry, Jiraiya-chan," he said with a shake of his head. "We tried summoning him, but nothing happened. Either someone is blocking the summoning somehow or he's…"

"He's not dead," Jiraiya said quickly, standing up and looking in the direction that Tonton had been leading them. He swallowed hard and softly added, "They wouldn't go through all this trouble just to kill him." He turned back to Fukasaku. "Next time I call you, it probably _will_ be in the middle of a really big fight, so be prepared."

"You don't want me coming with you right now?"

"If Orochimaru sees you, he might know what to expect. I need as many surprises as I can get if I'm going to beat him."

"You think he'll be there?" Tsunade asked, her voice worried.

"Maybe, maybe not, but I have to be prepared for him to be. This will be the last time he and I fight." Fukasaku nodded and disappeared into a cloud of smoke as Jiraiya, Tsunade, and Shizune began once again following Tonton as she tracked Team Seven and Naruto's kidnappers.

Jiraiya set his jaw and narrowed his eyes. If he ran into Orochimaru, one of them wouldn't be walking away. Jiraiya wouldn't leave the job of killing him to anyone else, not anymore.

After all, some things were better kept within the family.

ooo

Sand spilled out of Gaara's gourd and swirled around his feet as he prepared to face the attacking ninja, but none of the rocks that were sent flying through the air by the ninja from Iwagakure came anywhere close to him or his siblings. In fact, they were conspicuously aimed away from them. Gaara's eyes darted towards Temari just in time to see her frown in confusion.

Given how close a resemblance there was between Gaara and the Kazekage as well as the fact that his children were highly touted as symbols of the renewed strength of Sunagakure, they were obvious targets. With their proximity to the Kazekage and their location in the middle of the group of Suna dignitaries and ninja, it would be foolish _not_ to send jutsu their way. Even a miss could potentially hit someone else.

The shower of stones managed to hit only three people, a jounin and two chuunin. One of the chuunin was struck in the head and probably dead before he hit the ground, but the others only received glancing blows. Near the front of the group, a diplomat gave a cry of alarm as he was sucked into the ground up to his neck. The earth around him suddenly seemed to compact and his head fell loosely forward, his cries silenced.

Another volley of stones came at the group, but this time Gaara's hand shot forward and the rocks and boulders were caught in midair by his sand.

The Sand-nin looked at him in surprise, but as realization struck, they smiled and began forming seals of their own.

"Wait!" Yuura cried out, holding up his hands.

A few jutsu flew back and forth between the groups, but there were less than there should have been. All eyes slowly turned towards the dark-haired jounin.

He waited for just a second and then dropped to one knee in front of Gaara. "Gaara-sama, I have done as you and Sasori-sama commanded. Please, let there be no more fighting."

Gaara frowned in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

Yuura looked up, his eyes perplexed. "As you commanded, I have killed the Fourth Kazekage. Your ascension to power will be unchallenged now, so you and the Tsuchikaze can make your alliance public."

Gaara could almost hear the air being sucked from the lungs of those around him. He turned towards Temari and watched as a look of horror spread across her face; a familiar clicking noise brought his attention to his other side where Kankuro had slipped Karasu from his binding and was now glaring threateningly at Gaara.

"Stop lying," Gaara growled, his eyes returning to Yuura.

The jounin looked stunned, but nodded anyway as he stood and backed away, bowing every couple of steps. "Forgive me, Gaara-sama, I didn't know you wished to maintain the facade once your father had been assassinated. Please, don't kill me like you did your other spies… remember, you need me to coordinate your network of operatives within Suna's government…"

Gaara looked past the bowing jounin to the ninja and diplomats beyond him. Some were stunned, others were furious. Killer intent spiked all around him, directed at him for the first time in years. When he'd been a child, he'd felt this sort of intent from time to time, but once he'd proven how easily he could defend himself and eliminate threats, potential enemies had always been careful to keep their emotions in check. To have it coming at him now, at this level, from this many people…right when he'd decided he wanted to start changing things… it was almost unbearable.

"Stop it!" he yelled again. His hand rose up of its own volition, and the sand was up and around Yuura almost instantly. He had to stop these lies. He couldn't let people think that he'd had something to do with this. If they did, if things went back to the way they were when he was a child…

The darkness would claim him forever. There would be no escape, no matter what Naruto claimed.

"Please, Gaara-sama," Yuura begged, his voice hushed. The sand reached his neck and began spreading over his head, "I won't tell them how deep the conspiracy goes or who on the council is on your side… please…"

Suddenly the sand changed directions, flying away from Yuura and moving to protect Gaara as kunai and curses flew at him from all directions.

The only good thing about the situation was that there were no wind or puppet attacks. Gaara again turned his eyes in the direction of his sister and the sands parted just enough for him to see her. She didn't look as enraged as those attacking, but she was definitely getting there.

"Protect Gaara-sama," Yuura called out to the Rock-nin who had ambushed him.

The nearest ninja from Iwagakure began to form seals, but before he could finish, his hands were disconnected from his body at the wrists. The ninja looked down at his the stumps of his arms in surprise and then blood began to trickle out of his mouth and he slumped forward, dead. Behind him, the Kazekage stood, his hand pressed against his chest where blood was running down his robs. He reached up and ripped away his mask and hat, revealing the features that so many had noted Gaara's resemblance to.

"In the next life, Gaara, don't plan a coup unless you're willing to do the deed yourself," he winced slightly and then drew himself up to his full height. "How disappointing, Karura's death was a total waste."

The other Rock-nin, who had watched the unexpected turn in the battle in shock, attacked simultaneously. Some threw weapons with pinpoint accuracy, others attacked with ninjutsu and a few even stepped forward to challenge the Kazekage with taijutsu. Even injured, the Kazekage was on a whole different level from them.

He shifted to the side and several of the kunai flew over his shoulder while he reached out and grabbed the closest of the taijutsu users. In the blink of an eye, the hapless ninja had been turned into a shield, his back riddled with kunai and shuriken. The Kazekage tossed the body at the rest of the ninja moving towards him, brought his fingers together and then pressed his hands to the ground a two stone slabs rose up in front of him, deflecting several boulders thrown at him by ninjutsu.

"Kill Gaara, but try to take Yuura alive," the Kazekage ordered the Suna ninja, "I'll handle these." He stood, grabbed the large stone shields and threw them at his enemies as if they weighed only a fraction of their true weight. Two Rock-nin were crushed by the stones, the rest escaped but their faces showed their growing panic.

"Protect Gaara-sama at all costs!" Yuura yelled once more.

Gaara turned away from his father as the Kazekage began single handedly decimating the ranks of Iwagakure ninja and focused on the immediate problem of trying to convince those around him that he wasn't a traitor. From the looks on their faces, he doubted he was going to have much success.

"Gaara, please," Temari whispered as her fan came off her back, "if you surrender, we won't have to kill you."

"I didn't do it," Gaara replied, his green eyes shifting back and forth as he tried to keep track of all of his enemies at once. They were all highly trained, but he was certain he could beat any one of them. It was taking all of them that might be the problem. He'd faced multiple opponents on several occasions. Assassins sent by his father that used coordinated attacks to try to circumvent his ultimate defense. Not one of them had ever even touched him, but those fights were a lot harder than the simple assassination attempts by a lone chuunin or jounin. To make matters worse, he still felt a little tired after his fight with Naruto.

There was a way to win, a way to survive, but he wasn't sure that he could use it anymore. If he drew on Shukaku's power and transformed, every single person in the immediate vicinity would be dead. Temari, Kankuro, Baki, all of them…

But he would survive.

Up until today, that had been the single most important thing to him. Even just a few hours ago he would have done it without hesitating.

He was hesitating now.

A kunai whistled through the air, the sand reached up and caught it with ease. A chuunin off to the right started to form seals, but Gaara reached out his hand and the sands wrapped around the poor man's hands and broke every bone in them. Those two actions were purely reflexive, almost entirely defensive even, but they seemed to change his whole life. Suddenly, those around him who had been either scared or confused and not completely sure how to go about following the Kazekage's orders saw him as an aggressive threat that had to be crushed with maximum force. They seemed to realize that they had a huge numerical majority and that he – for all his power and abilities – was only a tired teenager who could be overwhelmed.

Projectiles and jutsu came at Gaara from all angles. He couldn't really attack without exposing himself to danger. In fact, he had to almost entirely encase himself in sand to stay alive.

"Please stop," he whispered in the darkness and he bent over and grabbed his head, "please…"

The darkness was nearly complete; he could almost picture it as the mouth of a giant beast about to swallow him. Naruto had thought that Gaara could change; that he could escape the fear and pain of loneliness, but the only thing those stupid promises had accomplished was to make it that much worse when the pain came back. All those thoughts of friends, of love, of acceptance… what good where they now?

A drunken giggle echoed in his ears. A promise of power, of security… of survival.

The left corner of Gaara's mouth slowly turned up, then the right corner followed it until his lips pulled back and his teeth became visible. He almost laughed at the absurdity of it all. He'd listened to all those sweet promises from Naruto. All those enticing dreams of things that weren't real, not to him anyway. For a few short hours he'd thought that other people should matter.

What had it gotten him?

The darkness was horrible, but it was familiar and comfortable. There was pain, but at least it was pain that he was used to, pain he could handle. Daring to hope had only made things worse.

It would be better to just give in to the darkness than feel the pain of betrayal and disappointment again, wouldn't it?

As if to answer his question, something impacted the shell and seemed to cut right through it. Suddenly, Gaara's left shoulder and back exploded in a pain like nothing he'd ever physically experienced before. Not Sakura's punch, not Naruto's wind jutsu, nothing had ever hurt him like this.

If he hadn't been bent over, whatever had just hit him might have cut right through his heart.

He almost wished that it had.

With a shaking hand he reached up and touched his shoulder. There was something warm, and sticky, and wet there. The feel of it was familiar, he'd touched something just like it very recently, but the pain made it hard to remember when or where. He breathed in deeply through his nose, trying to calm his body. The scent that came with the air was all he needed to identify the mystery substance.

Blood. He was bleeding. Not a little like he had after the pink haired girl had punched him, but a lot. In fact, a strange tingling feeling was already beginning to dance along his skin as a haze settled over his brain.

The sand around him softened and then began to collapse. He didn't have the energy to keep it up anymore; he didn't even have the energy necessary to remain standing anymore.

As the outside world came into view, Gaara dropped to his knees, his hand still clutching his bleeding shoulder, and looked up at the large imposing form of Baki. The jounin's eyes were blazing with rage as he towered over Gaara.

"I thought better of you," Baki whispered as his hand rose to deliver what would probably be a killing blow. "I thought this sort of treachery would be beneath you, perhaps I should have known better. I should have taken the assassination mission that the Kazekage tried to assign me to all those years ago."

Baki's hand began to descend, wind chakra probably cutting through the air right with it, but before it could reach Gaara, he threw his blood-covered hand forward and yelled, "Get away from me!"

Sand shot up from the ground, caught Baki in the chest, and sent him flying through the air. It wasn't as powerful a blow as it normally would have been, but it was enough to keep Gaara alive, if only for the moment.

A kunai flashed through the air and was blocked by the sand, but it got far closer than such an attack ever had before. Gaara glanced at it and could see that the tip of the blade was actually poking through the sand and nearly touching his forehead. He looked around wildly, hoping for some way to escape, but he was closed in from all sides and it was getting harder to think.

And then he saw Temari, her face pale, her eyes confused, and her hands clutching her fan so tightly that her knuckles were white. He wasn't sure if he should be happy that she hadn't attacked him yet or angry that she was so close to joining in. He wanted to ask her for help, but couldn't. If he did that and she attacked or even simply turned away from him… that would be a pain that he couldn't take, not when he was this weak already.

At that moment, Yuura seemed to appear out of thin air behind her, a strange smile on his face.

Gaara didn't think, he didn't hesitate. His lips twisted into a snarl as his hand shot forward and the sand followed it. Temari's eyes widened in horror at the apparent attack. She began to draw her fan back to try to counter it, but before she could, Gaara's sand passed over her shoulder and wrapped around Yuura's head.

Not his body, not his neck, just his head.

Gaara squeezed his hand into a fist and the threat to his sister was suddenly devoid of recognizable facial features.

The attack had taken more energy than he'd expected, he could feel himself slipping away now as the blood loss began to catch up with him. It was growing harder to see and the world that he could see was spinning around him for some reason.

"Why?" Temari's whisper penetrated the fog around his brain.

"I don't want the darkness to come again," Gaara replied weakly as he slumped forward into the dusty road and everything faded to black.

Naruto had told him he could live outside the darkness. He'd promised that there was love and acceptance to be found, that a purpose other than living only for himself could give him strength and happiness. Gaara had only managed to step into that sort of light for a short while, and it had cost him dearly.

But Temari was safe and, strangely, that made him feel better all the way up until he no longer felt anything at all.

ooo

Sakura landed heavily on the branch next to Sasuke and would have fallen had he not grabbed her with his free hand – the other was busy keeping Naruto's limp body on his shoulders. Things had happened so fast, she wasn't even sure what to make of it. One minute she and Kakashi were facing Rin, the next something big and powerful was attacking them and Kakashi had her swinging underneath the tree branch like a kid on a playground's monkey bars, and then he basically threw her at Sasuke. She supposed that she should have been ready for something like that. They were in the middle of a very dangerous situation, after all, but Rin's betrayal and even the fact that Naruto had the Kyuubi sealed inside of him – which explained a whole lot of mysteries – were enough to leave her feeling off balance, both physically and emotionally.

It was a good thing that Sasuke was around to at least help with her physical balance.

"Don't drop your guard," he warned her softly as he turned towards the base of the branch they were standing on.

Sakura followed his eyes and found a gray-haired ninja who didn't look too much older than her, standing with his back leaning casually against the tree trunk, a strange object – that bore a distinct resemblance to his own head – was either on his back or sticking out of his neck. After seeing the six-armed ninja who was with Rin, Sakura couldn't dismiss the idea that the large protrusion was attached to his body, maybe it was even really a second head (though she couldn't imagine how that would work anatomically).

Sakura caught a hint of movement out of the corner of her eye and glanced over her shoulder to find a female ninja – who appeared to only have the normal number of arms and heads – standing on a branch above and to their right. The woman flashed Sakura a cocky smirk and crossed folded her arms across her chest, her eyes shining like those of a predator.

"You have something of ours," the gray-haired ninja called out. "We want it back."

"Come and get him then," Sasuke growled.

The gray haired ninja smiled at Sasuke and then swung his fist down the branch at his feet. His arm seemed to blur as it passed through the air, giving the impression that he had three hands on that arm. However many hands he had, the effect was devastating as his hand smashed through the branch they were standing on.

Instinct kicked in and both Sakura and Sasuke tried to jump to save themselves from the four meter fall. Unfortunately, the branch didn't have the mass to really kick off of once it was no longer attached to the tree. All their attempted jumps did was to push the branch away from them so they could freefall to the ground.

Sakura bent her knees and ankles and was careful to land on the balls of her feet and instantly rolled forward to defuse the force of the impact on her body. Sasuke, with Naruto over his shoulders, was in more danger of injury, but he once again proved himself worthy of her admiration by quickly swinging Naruto off of his shoulders and into his arms so that when he landed and rolled he did not crush his friend in the process. His quick thinking had saved him and Naruto from any broken bones, but the dead weight in his arms was still enough to throw off his balance and instead of rolling smoothly to his feet, as Sakura had, he tumbled through the grass and dirt of the forest floor before coming to a stop at the feet of the gray-haired ninja with Naruto laying on top of him.

Sakura was about to run to him, but before she could, the female ninja dropped down in front of her, cutting her off from Sasuke.

"I'm Sakon of the Four Sound," the gray-haired ninja informed Sasuke, "and you are Uchiha Sasuke. After everything that I've heard about you, I expected you to be… _taller_."

Sasuke pushed Naruto off of him and swung his legs around, trying to take Sakon's feet out from under him as he spun back to a standing position. "I don't care who you _were_ or what you expected from me."

Sakon scowled for a brief second before a smile returned to his face. "Why don't you show me how amazing your Sharingan is? After all the hype, I hope _it_ won't be as disappointing as you already are."

Before Sasuke could respond, the forest was filled with the sounds of birds chirping followed quickly by a strange, almost _wet_, sound… like a rock being dropped into a bowl of pudding. The four ninja on the ground looked around in confusion and then there was a large crash as a body hit the ground not far from where they were standing, blood flowing freely from a large hole in his chest. Four pairs of eyes looked at the large body – with normal skin color – and then up at the spot where Kakashi was standing, lightening still crackling around his blood covered hand.

"Jirobo," Sakon whispered in shock.

"Fucking fatass…" the female Sound ninja added. "How could he be beaten so easily? Even if that is Copy-ninja Kakashi, Jirobo wasn't _that_ weak, was he?"

Sakon's eyes narrowed as he turned back to Sasuke and Sakura. He let out a slow breath and shook his head. "Damn. Play time's over, I guess. Tayuya, you know your job; I'll take care of these two."

Without warning, he swung at Sasuke's head. Sasuke twisted to the side, but was caught by a second fist that seemed to come out of nowhere and was sent crashing to the ground. Tayuya used the momentary distraction to hurry to Naruto's limp form, pick it up, and start running for the nearest tree.

She made it three steps before she was suddenly yanked off her feet by something grabbing onto her red hair. She only had a second to gasp at the sudden pain in her scalp before a knee was driven into her back, giving her something to distract her from the first pain.

Sakura opened her hand and wiggled her fingers, dropping a small handful of red hair, and then reached down to grab Naruto. Just as she was lifting him, however, Sakon's foot slammed into her stomach and his fist caught her in the temple, dropping her to the ground as Naruto was pulled from her grasp.

Sakura shook her head to clear the cobwebs and managed to make out what seemed to be the forms of Sakon and Tayuya running off in a northerly direction, Naruto unceremoniously draped over Sakon's shoulder.

"Shit," she groaned as she forced herself to her feet.

She was only on her knees when Sasuke reached her and helped her the rest of the way up. "You okay?" he asked.

"Fine, but they're getting away."

"Can you keep up?" he asked as he looked in the direction the two Sound-nin had taken Naruto.

Sakura nodded, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to will her vision to totally return to normal. "If I can't, go on without me and I'll catch up when I can," she said. "We can't let them get away with Naruto."

"We won't."

The two of them leapt into the branches of a nearby tree and hurried off in the direction that the Sound-nin had been traveling. Sasuke was a little ahead of Sakura and steadily pulling farther away, but she was quickly recovering from the blow to her head and didn't think that he'd get so far in front of her that she'd totally lose sight of him. It took a second for her to realize that this wasn't necessarily because Sasuke was pacing himself to let her stay close, but because her training with Rin, Yugao, and Anko had really improved her speed that much. Sasuke was faster, but not by as much anymore.

Sakura let out a calming breath and increased her pace as much as she could without burning all of her energy. She would need it when they caught up with Naruto's kidnappers. And they _were_ going to catch up with Naruto's kidnappers, of that she was certain.

There was no way she and Sasuke would let someone take their friend so easily.

ooo

Kakashi looked down at Jirobo's body and then slowly lifted his left eye up to stare impassively at his two remaining opponents – even now he couldn't bring himself to refer to Rin as an 'enemy.' The Sharingan that he had to keep covered to keep from burning through his chakra supply drank in and memorized every detail of the six-armed ninja, Kidomaru, especially the look of shock on his face at how quickly Jirobo had been dispatched.

However the large man had accomplished the strange transformation, it had obviously given him a large increase in strength and even speed, but it had not increased his speed to the point that he was a match for Kakashi. Jirobo had looked so confident as he attacked, but after Kakashi easily avoided three punches that probably would have broken bones if they had connected, Jirobo had been off balance and confused. He'd barely had a chance to look scared as Kakashi formed a Chidori and drove it into his chest. The transformation didn't make Jirobo's skin impenetrable, thankfully, nor did it change the location of his heart.

Destroy the heart and the fight is over.

Kidomaru probably wouldn't make it that easy, unfortunately.

The sounds of struggling could be heard below as Sakura and Sasuke began to fight with the other two Sound ninja. Kakashi wanted to watch them, or better yet to help them, but doing so would only make their odds worse. If he kept Rin and Kidomaru out of that fight, then Sasuke and Sakura would only have to deal with one-to-one odds. The two Sound ninja might be very powerful, but Kakashi had faith in his genin's abilities.

"You're getting as lazy as you pretend to be, Kakashi-kun," Rin said with a sigh. "In the old days, you would have just killed them all before we even had a chance to react to your presence. Your laziness has made it so you can't even help your genin without making things worse for them."

Kakashi shook his head. "It wasn't laziness; I just hoped that these four would be the only ones with information on Orochimaru. If it turned out that you knew about what he'd planned to do with Naruto if he got his hands on him, not only would I have had to kill you, but I would have had to hate you as well… and I don't want to do that."

Rin soft smile reminded him of ones that she'd flashed at him during their childhood; it was strange to see it when they were on opposite sides of a fight like this. "Rest easy then, I don't know his plans and I don't care. I'm sure that he will use Kyuubi against Konoha in some way, probably against the other villages as well. People might die, but maybe it would be for the best anyway." Her smile faded a little and a strange expression crossed her face. It was sort of a mix of sadness and disgust and resignation. "If everyone was united under one leader, even if they were forced into, at least it would end the pointless wars. The villages were made to put a stop to wars, but they only make us more efficient at killing each other. One war leads into the next. Shinobi die, are mourned, and then replaced and forgotten. Someone like me leaves the service or gets killed in action and a little girl like Sakura-chan is trained to replace me so she can die too… all for the _village_. Does anyone in the village even remember Obito anymore? Do any of them care besides you? He died for nothing. All these years later and another war is starting up again; nothing's changed and nothing was gained by him dying. At least the people who die if Orochimaru takes over will be dying for a reason. Their deaths will lead to fewer deaths in the future, until there really is a lasting peace."

The Sharingan wasn't as good at reading emotions as the Byakugan, but Kakashi had plenty of practice doing it without the aide of dojutsu. Rin believed what she was saying. That begged the question of whether or not Orochimaru had done something to _force _her to believe it or if she'd already thought it and he just used it to further entice her to join him. "Did he tell you this?"

Rin shrugged. "He might have said something about it, but it wasn't anything that I hadn't already thought before." She looked Kakashi in the eye and a large smile broke across her face. "It isn't the reason why I joined him," she said with a wink that told Kakashi she could guess what he was thinking, "I already told you, I get to have Obito brought back to life and the village gets rid of Kyuubi. Everyone wins… sort of."

Kakashi shook his head. "Rin, you can't rea—"

Before he could finish, he jerked his head to the side as a thick gold-brown colored object shot past him. He started to turn towards Kidomaru, but three more of the projectiles were sent his way. His Sharingan easily tracked all three of them, allowing him to avoid the first two with only minimal effort and then catch the third as it passed over his shoulder. Kakashi almost smiled at the look of surprise on the younger ninja's face as twirled the sharp spike made out of a substance that felt like metal (though it didn't look like any metal Kakashi had ever seen before) between his fingers.

Kidomaru's surprise was only temporary, but it was enough to keep him from attacking again. Kakashi used that time to slowly move away from Rin and Kidomaru until they were both almost directly in front of him. So far, Rin hadn't attacked or made any aggressive movements towards him – in fact, she'd stopped Kidomaru's initial attempt at attacking – but that didn't meant that she wouldn't join in if she felt the need. It had been a long time since he'd seen her fight so it was hard to judge whether or not he could take both of them at once.

Kidomaru smiled and scratched the back of his head with his upper right hand, causing his bushy black ponytail to bounce playfully. "Well, this game looks like it's going to be pretty interesting. I've never really faced someone like you, I wonder if I'll be able to win."

Something in the younger ninja's voice told Kakashi that Kidomaru didn't really think the outcome was in doubt, but that was fine with him. A cocky idiot was a lot easier to kill than a nervous one. With luck, he might not even need to kill Kidomaru. It would be good to bring back something for Ibiki to work with after Naruto had been rescued.

Kakashi's eye shifted to Rin. She wasn't looking at him anymore, but was instead watching Kidomaru very closely, a strangely irritated expression on her face.

"Don't kill him," Rin told Kidomaru sternly. "Orochimaru promised that Kakashi and his genin would be left alive, I won't accept that promise being broken."

"Don't worry," Kidomaru said with a wink, "you'd be surprised just how much trauma the human body can survive."

"I assure you I wouldn't," Rin replied coldly. "And I'll be perfectly happy to show you exactly how _painfully_ close to death you can come without getting that merciful release if you do any permanent harm to him."

Kidomaru rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I guess no game would be complete without a few rules to handicap the players." He brought his three right hands up to his mouth, spit something into them, and then threw it at Kakashi. Whatever he'd secreted out of his mouth, formed into a large web as it flew at Kakashi while simultaneously spreading out and sticking to the branches along its path.

Kakashi jumped backwards to give himself some more time to think, landing on a branch behind him and then deciding to just try to jump over the webbing. He nearly made it. Another half second and he would have totally cleared the web, but unfortunately it snagged onto his foot before he was totally out of harm's way.

With his foot snagged, his upward momentum came to an abrupt end as he was jerked back towards the rest of the webbing. Thinking quickly, he snatched a kunai from his weapon pouch and tried to cut himself free, only to find that the blade was ineffective against whatever material the web was made out of. With the most obvious avenue of escape eliminated, Kakashi swung the kunai a second time just as he was passing a small tree branch. He came free of the web instantly and grabbed the thin branch just before it was out of reach.

Kakashi looked down at his bare foot and then pulled himself up onto the branch that bent dangerously under his weight. He would have to be careful now, cutting a sandal off was fine, but if that foot was caught again, he'd either have to start amputating limbs or would just have to find out what would have happened if he hadn't freed himself this time. Neither of those options sounded very appealing.

"Ho ho," Kidomaru laughed. "This _is_ fun! Maybe I'll make a game of getting you to strip out of the rest of your clothes to keep from getting caught and see if that doesn't get Rin to stop being such a frosty bitc—"

A kunai whizzed over his shoulder, and a quick check of its origin revealed Rin already fingering a second one.

"Eh, probably wouldn't have helped anyway," Kidomaru shrugged. He arched his back as his cheeks puffed up and then whipped forward and spit another web at Kakashi, followed by another, and then another.

ooo

Sakura frowned as she caught sight of Sakon and Tayuya ahead of her and Sasuke as they sped through the forest, trying desperately to catch up with the kidnappers. The two of them were obviously pretty strong and they'd had a decent head start while Sasuke was checking to make sure that she was okay.

So, why were she and Sasuke catching up so easily?

More than that, why weren't there any traps? They couldn't honestly have thought that she and Sasuke wouldn't pursue them, could they? There should have at least been a few traps being set as they fled. A trip wire, some exploding tags, something… instead the two of them had made it really easy to track and catch up with them.

"Sasuke," Sakura whispered as her frown deepened, "I don't like this." He'd slowed slightly to allow her to pull even with him a few minutes ago, once it became apparent that their speeds weren't so different.

"I know," he replied with a small nod. "They're up to something."

Sakura tried to think of a list of things that could possibly reasons for the Sound-nin's slowed pace. It was a pretty long list, but it really came down to three general possibilities: they actually _were_ this slow, they were preparing an ambush, or they wanted to take another captive or two. The moment the final idea hit her, she was certain that it was the true reason. She couldn't believe that they were actually this slow and an ambush didn't require them to move as slowly as they were. They could just leave some clues leading Sasuke and Sakura into the ambush and be on their way. Going slower meant that they intended to be caught and being caught would, of course, bring them back into direct contact with Sasuke and Sakura and the only reason for them to do that was so they could capture one of them.

It didn't take a genius to guess who they would be after.

"Sasuke-kun, they're probably going to—"

"I know," he replied quickly, cutting her off, "but don't think about it. It doesn't matter what they're trying to do."

Sakura nodded. "They have Naruto, so we don't have any choice but to follow them."

A small smile appeared on Sasuke's face. "We have _some_ choice. Keep following them. When you see my signal, get Naruto and get out as quick as you can."

Sakura turned to ask him exactly what the signal would look like, but before she'd fully turned her head, Sasuke was gone. It occurred to Sakura that she probably wasn't quite as close to him in speed as she'd thought. He really had been moving slower for her sake.

She'd have to ask Anko or Yugao for help with that the next time they had some downtime between their missions. Though with a war starting up, it was anyone's guess when _that_ would be.

Ahead of her, Sakon turned and glanced over his shoulder. "You're persistent," he called back to her, "it's kind of entertaining, but you're way too slow!"

He and Tayuya started to pick up their pace, pulling a bit farther ahead of Sakura and forcing her to speed up as well to be in position for whatever Sasuke was planning. She wished he'd taken a few seconds to explain himself, but all of a sudden, explanations weren't necessary as Sasuke exploded out of the leaves in the tree above Sakon and Tayuya, his hand covered in crackling, blue lightening. He dropped down on them like an eagle pouncing on an unsuspecting fish, his arm already moving forward.

Sakon didn't even look up at him, but still managed to catch Sasuke by the arm and fling him away without being touched by the jutsu. He smiled as he watched Sasuke fall towards the ground, but then his eyes grew wide as the wire that had been looped around his left foot tightened and jerked him off his branch as well.

Sasuke pulled the wire with his free hand, speeding Sakon's fall so that the two of them caught up with each other just before they hit the ground. Sasuke slammed both knees into Sakon's stomach and somehow flipped himself around so that he was coming down on top of his enemy. They hit the ground with so much force that they vanished within the resulting explosion of rocks and dirt.

It took every ounce of willpower Sakura had not to yell for Sasuke or hurry to his side to make sure that he was alright. He'd said that she should go straight for Naruto and get him out of there and that's just what she intended to do.

Of course, once she had Naruto away from danger she would be free to yell and hurry to Sasuke's side to make sure he was alright.

Tayuya, unfortunately, didn't seem too worried about Sakon. She pulled Naruto off of her shoulder and held him at her side by the back of his new chuunin vest as she waited for Sakura to reach her. It struck Sakura as odd that Tayuya was so unconcerned about her teammate, but it didn't change her goal. She had to hit Tayuya hard enough to get Naruto away from her.

Sakura lowered her shoulders and charged headlong towards the Sound-nin. A smirk crossed Tayuya's lips as she reached into the folds of her shirt and pulled out a thin metal tube. Sakura wished that they were on the ground where she could actually use most of the ninjutsu that she knew, but with Naruto in Tayuya's hands it would have been hard to use her natural elemental inclination, earth, without endangering him as well anyway. She would just have to make do with what she had at her disposal.

Tayuya shook her head at Sakura's foolish straight ahead attack. The second Sakura was within range, Tayuya swung her metal tube, nearly taking Sakura's head off…

Or it would have, if Sakura hadn't suddenly vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving behind a log that shattered under the force of the impact.

"Kawarimi? Seriously?" Tayuya asked as she looked over her shoulder to find Sakura standing on a branch slightly behind her. "Shit, I almost feel bad for killing you if this is the best you've got."

Sakura took a deep breath and then leapt off the branch, heading for Tayuya once more.

Tayuya stabbed the metal tube forward, slamming the butt-end into Sakura and then started to roll her eyes when the pink-haired kunoichi vanished once more, but before she'd completed the dismissive action her brown eyes caught sight of the small piece of paper stuck to the log. "Shit!"

She turned to flee from the exploding tag, but only managed two steps before Naruto was pulled from her hand. Instinct brought her head around to see what had happened, just in time for Sakura's fist to make solid contact with her jaw. Tayuya was sent flying through the air until her flight came to a sudden end as she slammed into the trunk of a large tree. She started to slump forward, but gravity seemed to forget about forcing her to complete the rest of her fall.

Sakura quickly set Naruto down, knowing that she wouldn't get far unless she could get Tayuya to stay down for at least a few seconds. Tayuya and Sakon had been going slow to make sure that Sakura and Sasuke could catch up with them, and Sakura had actually had to struggle a little to overtake them. There was no doubt that when Tayuya went full speed, Sakura stood little chance of managing to run away. She would need to get a good head start and then find a way to cover her trail and hide or perhaps stash Naruto's body and lead Tayuya away from him.

It was too bad Naruto was unconscious; Taijuu Kage Bunshin was practically made for this sort of situation.

He was unconscious, however, so she'd just have to come up with some other plan. Perhaps she could use Kawarimi again and this time attach a real exploding tag instead of a fake one. Had she done it last time, it seemed like it would have worked, but she couldn't risk it with Naruto so close to where the explosion was going to go off.

Tayuya looked up at Sakura, hatred burning in her eyes, and bared her teeth. This time, Sakura knew, Tayuya wouldn't be underestimating her. She'd be going for a total kill and nothing less.

"Anytime you want to wake up, Naruto, feel free," Sakura mumbled as she brought her fingers together.

Tayuya leapt from the tree, her arms outstretched like a tiger leaping for its prey. To her, Sakura seemed to cower, probably scared of the fact that she'd absorbed such a powerful punch with so little ill effects, but then, just as she was about to drive her fist into Sakura's face. The branch that Sakura was standing exploded as thinner branches erupted from within it, grabbing Tayuya out of the air and pulling her down.

Sakura watched for just a second to make sure that the genjutsu had taken effect and then picked up Naruto and started to make good on her end of Sasuke's plan – if it could be called a plan. Tayuya was strong, probably strong enough to break out of the genjutsu pretty quickly, there was no time to try to kill her or even to look and see how Sasuke was doing. She had to get Naruto somewhere semi-safe and then she could come back and help Sasuke.

She jumped towards a tree that would lead her along a path that wouldn't take her directly back to Konoha. Heading straight towards the village would be the most obvious route, she couldn't risk being caught before she'd had a chance to hide Naruto and circle around so she seemed to come from a different direction.

Before she'd even reached the branch, however, a shadow fell over her. Sakura looked backand her eyes widened as Tayuya's metal tube slammed down onto her shoulder. She heard the cracking of bone and knew, rather than felt, that Naruto had slipped from her hands as they both tumbled towards the ground.

For good or ill – she wasn't really sure which – Sakura's fall was broken by her crashing into several branches on her way to the ground. It _did_ save her from one large, painful landing, but did so by breaking it up into several smaller, painful landings. On top of that, two of the branches hit her in the legs, flipping her around so that she had no idea where the ground was or where it would strike when she finally did land. Luckily she came down mostly on her back, hitting a relatively soft patch of ground that was covered in some small flowering plants. It was about the only 'lucky' thing that had happened to her since her feet had left the branch a moment earlier.

"Putting a fucking weak genjutsu like that on me is a goddamn insult!" Tayuya snarled as she landed a short distance from Sakura.

Sakura tried to push herself up to a sitting position, but quickly discovered that she couldn't put any weight on her left arm or even really move it. A quick glance confirmed that her clavicle bone was broken, the tell-tale dip in the shoulder being evidence enough even if she couldn't clearly see the distinct raised bump where the fracture was pressing against the inside of her skin. It was a common injury for a ninja to get during their Academy days, especially during taijutsu training, but in the field it could be devastating. With the bone broken, the muscles couldn't support the weight of the upper arm, meaning that she couldn't really do much to lift it.

She'd basically lost the ability to use taijutsu, ninjutsu, and genjutsu all in one blow.

Tayuya took a few steps to the side and pulled Naruto's limp body out of a small bush. His right arm was bent at a funny angle due to a fracture of his humerus bone, but he seemed – so near as Sakura could tell while still lying on her back and trying to block out the considerable amount of pain she was in – to have survived the fall without any permanent damage. Tayuya pressed her fingers against his throat, checking for a pulse, and then turned towards Sakura.

"Time to say goodbye," she said with a grin as she brought the tube up to her lips, revealing it to be a flute.

Before she could blow through it and activate whatever jutsu or attack it could produce, Sasuke's tackled her, driving her to the ground and then flipping up onto his feet again.

"Are you alright, Sakura?" he asked as he hurried towards her.

Sakura wasn't sure how to answer his question, as she was definitely _not_ alright. "My collar bone is broken," she admitted as she tried once more to get to her feet. "I need a few minutes to fix it."

Sasuke watched as Tayuya rose to her feet and then looked off to the side where Sakon was walking calmly towards him. "You'll have to hurry."

"I need your help," Sakura whispered softly, finally managing to get her feet under her so she could get back to a mostly standing position. "You have to lift my left hand for me, so I can form the seals."

Without turning away from the two enemies that were now moving towards him, Sasuke reached back and lifted Sakura's hand so that her functioning hand could reach it while she formed the seals. In little more than a second, Sakura's right hand was glowing as green chakra flowed around it.

"You have to turn around for this part," she told him. "I need you to push down a little on the part where my bone is sticking up, just so it's close to the other piece." She let her eyes drift from Tayuya to Sakon and then added, "On the count of three. One, two… three."

Sasuke turned, found the right spot, and pushed down. Sakura cried out in pain even as she pressed her hand against the spot and felt the healing begin to take place. Were it not for the fact that Rin had betrayed them to another village, pretending to be their friend while preparing to kidnap Naruto, and then speaking about Naruto as if he were some thing instead of a human being… which was _a lot_ to get past… Sakura might have felt grateful to Rin for helping her improve her medical-ninjutsu so much.

As soon as Sakura had her hand pressed over her collar bone, Sasuke spun back around, his red eyes searching for any attacks that might be coming their way. He was barely in time to block a punch from Tayuya that had enough force behind it to nearly drive him to his knees. With that much strength behind her attack, however, she was forced to lean far more into her punch than she should have, putting almost all of her weight on her front foot. It hardly took any strength at all to grab her by the wrist, pivot and throw her into Sakon who was about to reach for Naruto.

The two Sound-nin went down in a loud, cursing jumble, but Sakon was able to extract himself from Tayuya with surprising ease. Sasuke brought his arms back up, ready for whatever was going to come next, but rather than attack, Sakon shook his head ruthfully and smiled.

"You're pretty good," he admitted, "but from what I hear, your brother would mop the floor with you and then turn you into his obedient little pet. Probably could make you lick your own piss off the floor and think it was your idea or that it tasted like orange juice. Near as I can figure, you're strong in spite of that pathetic village, not because of it."

"Nobody asked you," Sasuke spat.

Sakon shrugged. "This is probably a waste of time, since you don't seem to care how weak you are or that you'll never be as strong as your brother if you keep on this path, but I'm supposed to offer to let you join us. Orochimaru-sama, one of the legendary Sannin, thinks you have potential. He wants to help you get stronger."

"I'm not interested," Sasuke replied. "Anyone who kidnaps my friends, sending _underlings_ to do what he's afraid to do himself, doesn't have the answers I'm looking for."

Again, Sakon shrugged. "We figured as much. Dumbass like you probably doesn't even know just how weak you really are."

Sasuke's red eyes narrowed. "Come a little closer and say that," he growled. "I'll show you the level of my strength."

Instead of rising to the challenge, Sakon sighed and looked up at the sky that could just barely be seen through the thick canopy of branches. "This is getting boring," he said, "and it's taking a lot longer than it should." He looked at Tayuya and said, "Take blondy and get going, if we mess around any longer we're going to be late and you know what _he_ thinks about that. I can handle these little kids."

Tayuya looked like she wanted to argue, but at the word '_he_' her eyes widened and she nodded quickly. She stepped over to Naruto and started to pick him up, but before she could, Sasuke was next to her, his fist already moving forward to knock her back down.

His hand never reached its target as Sakon's shot out and caught him by the wrist. Sasuke looked down at the hand restraining him and his eyes widened. What looked like orange worms were spreading across Sakon's skin, except they weren't on top of his skin, or under his skin, they were more like marks on his skin in the shape of worms. Sasuke looked up from the hand, up to Sakon's face and found the same markings. Once they'd fully covered his face, they faded to a simple black, though held their long, rounded shape.

Sakon stuck out his tongue, revealing that some of the marks were even on that, and brushed his long grey hair away from his face. "I suppose this is a bit of a surprise, but I've been holding back on you up until now. I'll give you a little demonstration of how strong Orochimaru-sama can make a person, maybe then you'll see the light… if you don't," he smiled and shrugged, "well, you'll be dead anyway, so who cares?"

Without giving any muscle movement that Sasuke's Sharingan could read ahead of time, Sakon's foot slammed into Sasuke's stomach, doubling him over. An uppercut lifted Sasuke into the air, where he completed a full flip before Sakon caught him by the foot and slammed him back to the ground.

"Kimimaro has way more power than you," Sakon noted with a small frown, "I don't get why Orochimaru would be interested in someone this weak." He looked over at Tayuya and said, "Get going. I'll catch up in a minute."

Sakura was torn. Should she try to go save Naruto before Tayuya took him away, or should she try to help Sasuke before Sakon beat him into a pulp? More than that, with her shoulder only just starting to mend, was there any point in trying either since she would probably just be quickly beaten or get in the way?

Hurt or not, she decided, there was no way she could let them just take Naruto. If Tayuya got any sort of a lead on them, there was a good chance that she would escape and they would never see Naruto again.

Sakura forced herself to run towards Naruto, doing her best to ignore the extremely painful bouncing of her shoulder – and the broken collar bone attached to it – that the movement produced. Tayuya almost completely ignored her, barely even shifting her eyes in the direction of the movement. For a second, Sakura thought that she'd somehow lucked out, then Sakon grabbed her by the left shoulder and squeezed… hard.

Sakura screamed in pain and tried to pull away from the pressure, but all she managed to do was turn to face her attacker. Sakon smiled wickedly at her, relishing the agony on her face. Behind him, Sakura saw Sasuke rise up, a kunai clenched in his fist, ready to strike. She screamed louder and played up the pain she was feeling to make sure that Sasuke wouldn't be heard and that Sakon would keep his attention fully on her.

The kunai cut through the air as Sasuke prepared to put an end to Sakon, but strangely a hand shot up and caught his arm before he could make contact. Sakura stopped screaming and frowned. Sakon's right hand was on her shoulder; his left had reached out and trapped her right hand so she couldn't swing at him in her efforts to free herself… by her count that should left him with zero hands to defend with.

"Well, Sakon, I never thought that you would need me for a bunch of losers like these," Sakon's second head said as it moved for the first time so far as Sakura had ever seen. "You're messing around too much again."

"Come on, Ukon," Sakon replied with a smile. "It's no fun if we finish it real quick." He looked at Sakura and winked. "My older brother and I are extremely close," he told her. "Normally, he's a bit lazy, sleeping inside my body, but when I'm fighting he likes to come out and play. "Ukon can extend his any part of his body from any part of mine whenever he wants. He can defend and attack from any angle at anytime… cool, huh?"

Sakura did not think it was cool, but she didn't have time to say so as a foot suddenly shot out of Sakon's stomach and kicked her in the face, sending her crashing to the ground.

With her out of the way, Ukon lifted Sasuke off the ground and tossed him a short distance into the air while Sakon spun around, his fist cocked. "Tarenken!"

What looked like a blurred series of fists struck Sasuke in the chest, sending him tumbling end over end through the dirt and grass of the forest floor.

Sakura wasn't sure if it was intentional or not, but it seemed that Sakon, or Ukon, or whoever they were had actually saved Sasuke by tossing him into the air. Had he/they connected with a punch that hard while Sasuke was held in place or had his back against something solid, it might have killed him.

Lying on the ground, she gingerly lifted her left arm, formed the seals for Shousen no Jutsu and once more placed her hand against her left clavicle, trying to heal it as much as possible. Sakon squeezing her shoulder had hurt, but it hadn't really done any more damage to the broken bone since he hadn't been putting much direct pressure on the injury. After a few seconds, she pulled her hand away and took as good a look as she could manage without a mirror. The bone was obviously not fully healed, not even half-way healed, probably not even a third of the way healed, but it was better than nothing. If she had to guess, she'd say that she'd probably managed to give herself about the same amount of healing as she could have gotten if she'd had the bone set and her arm in a sling for three or four days. Not nearly enough healing to be of much use in this sort of fight, but it was enough healing for one very important thing.

Sakura brought her arms up and began forming seals. "Doton: Retsudo Tenshou!" Her right hand hit the ground, causing it to split and shatter, the cracks racing towards Sakon and Ukon while both of their heads were turned towards Sasuke. They must have felt the earth tremble beneath their feet, because they turned a split second before the crumbling ground reached them, but it was still too late. The ground beneath them opened up and swallowed them whole. Sakura instantly twisted her hand to the side, closing the fissure and, with luck, crushing them inside. She still wasn't great at the jutsu, so she suspected that she was only slowing them down, but it was enough for the moment.

She ran to Sasuke and helped him sit up. Without asking permission, she lifted his shirt and gently probed his chest with her fingers. He winced a little, but the damage wasn't nearly as bad as she'd thought it might be, a few cracked ribs and some deep bruising, but nothing too serious.

"Sakon?" he asked looking at the broken earth not too far from them.

"He'll be down there for a little while," Sakura assured him with a smile that she hoped was convincing. A stupid plan began to form in her mind and she instantly knew that it was their best chance of success. "More importantly, that Tayuya woman is getting away with Naruto."

With a groan, Sasuke climbed to his feet and looked in the direction Tayuya was heading when they'd last seen her. "Let's go."

"I'm staying here," Sakura said softly. "I'd only slow you down at this point. I still need to heal more before I'll be able to travel very quickly."

"Then do it quick and we'll go together."

"She'll have gotten away by that time," Sakura pointed out. She knew how dangerous it would be, but she also knew that they didn't have much of a choice at this point. "You might be fast enough to catch her, but that's only if you go on without me."

Sasuke shook his head. "If he—"

The ground where Sakon had been swallowed up trembled a little and a dirty hand slowly pushed through the dark earth, clawing its way towards freedom.

"Go," Sakura said firmly, "I'll hold him off."

"You can't," Sasuke argued, "you're tired and…"

"If you don't go now, Tayuya will definitely get away and we'll lose Naruto. You're the fastest and the strongest. You can catch up, rescue Naruto, and get back here in time to help me. I can hold him off until you get back."

Sasuke shook his head. "This is stupid, we need to stick together."

An arm all the way up to the elbow was now out of the ground and a second hand had appeared along with the top of a head. Sasuke threw a kunai at it, but a third hand appeared from the head and caught the kunai in midair. Sakura had no idea how that worked, she couldn't even see Ukon or Sakon's eyes, but it didn't matter. They were coming out of the ground and they were going to be pissed. Sasuke had to leave right now or he was going to get drawn into the fight and then they really would lose Naruto to whatever horrible fate was in store for him.

Sakura looked Sasuke in the eyes, seeing how torn he was. Could he potentially sacrifice one friend to save another? Kakashi had threatened to put them in that sort of situation on the day he tested them. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but she remembered him asking her which of her teammates he should kill: Naruto or Sasuke. She'd been relieved when she didn't actually have to make a choice that day (though she probably would have chosen Naruto in a misguided attempt to prove her love for Sasuke). Today Sasuke was feeling like he was being put in the same sort of situation: Naruto or Sakura?

Only, the choice wasn't his, it was hers.

And to her, the choice was simple.

"Remember what Kakashi-sensei said," she whispered to Sasuke, "Naruto is the priority. If you don't go, this mission will be a failure. Just trust me to stay alive until you get back."

Sasuke swallowed, closed his eyes, and nodded slowly. "I do."

"Good," she grabbed him by the front of the shirt and pulled him forward, wanting to get one final thing done before she lost her nerve – or got killed in an unwinnable fight. She briefly caught sight of his eyes opening and then widening as her lips met his, but then her own eyes were closed and she could only feel the trembling of his warm lips against hers.

Inexperience kept it from being anything more than her lips touching his, necessity prevented it from lasting more than just a few seconds, and nervousness prevented Sakura from meeting Sasuke's eyes as she released his shirt and let him pull back, but it was her first real kiss and it now belonged to Sasuke. More than that, it was his first kiss as well. No one could take that from her, which was good because she wasn't sure if she would ever get to have another. She knew without a doubt that Sakon was strong enough to kill her and she wasn't strong enough to delay him from doing so for more than a few minutes.

If it was to be her only kiss, better to share it with Sasuke and go out on top. The only thing missing was the chance to – _mostly_ playfully – rub Ino's nose in it. "Now hurry up before she gets away," she said softly as she stepped back and turned her eyes towards the spot where Sakon was now pulling himself to his feet.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sasuke open his mouth to say something, close it as his first comment refused to come out, and then open it again as he too moved on to more pressing matters. "I'll get him and be back in time to help you, I promise."

Sakura smiled. "I know you will," she lied.

Sasuke turned, leapt into the nearest tree, and took off after Tayuya so fast that he practically seemed to vanish. Sakura stared at the spot where she'd caught a hint of his movement and then turned back to Sakon.

"You're kind of pissing me off," he growled as he tilted his head to the side until his neck cracked and the repeated the movement the other way. "Playing with you isn't fun anymore; I'm just going to kill you."

Sakura nodded, a small smile on her face. "I knew that before you even climbed out of that shallow grave I dug for you."

"Then you should have run away."

"If you hadn't kidnapped my friend, I might have considered it."

Sakon's face as he ran towards her told Sakura the time for quipping was over. His sudden increase in speed told her that she would have to be perfect to stay alive long enough to buy Sasuke the time he needed. Her heart told her that she would be perfect for as long as it took, but probably not for as long as it would take for Sasuke to get back.

ooo

Kakashi pushed chakra into his feet and fell backwards off the thin branch he was standing on as the web-like substance that Kidomaru could produce from his mouth flew at him. With just enough chakra to keep him attached to the branch, but not enough chakra to keep his feet from sliding along it, he actually seemed to just spin around the branch like the spoke of a wheel. It was a tricky piece of chakra manipulation, but one that he'd mastered so long ago it didn't even take any thought to do.

The three blobs of webbing passed over the top of the branch, where he'd been standing just moment earlier, hit the tree's trunk and stuck fast. Kakashi carefully noted where they were so that he would be able to avoid them should he ever need to land on that particular tree again. It wouldn't do to go through all the effort of dodging them only to land on them later and end up just as stuck.

After spinning around the branch about 270 degrees, he bent his knees and jumped away from it, aiming not at Rin or Kidomaru, but at another tree trunk. He hit his target running, intentionally moving behind it for a second before coming out on the other side, his fingers forming seals as he prepared his attack.

"Suiton: Mizzu Rappa no Jutsu!" A large spout of water shot from Kakashi's mouth, aimed right at Kidomaru's head. Kakashi was still several meters away from his enemy and the jutsu wasn't an impressively fast one, but then he wasn't interested in speed at the moment, only in reactions.

Kidomaru could have jumped over it, but with the jutsu aimed high, it was easier to go down instead of up. Using Mizzu Rappa was kind of like throwing up – but without the unpleasant nauseous feeling or the tightening of muscles as tubes and valves in the body were forced to work counter to their natural inclinations – wherever you pointed your mouth, the stuff flying out of it was sure to follow. If Kakashi lifted his head up, the water stream went up, if he tilted his head down, it went down. For this reason, jumping to avoid the attack would have been foolish as Kakashi might have been able to adjust his aim and hit his target. Going down would also give Kidomaru a moment of protection behind the large branch that he'd been standing on.

Just as Kakashi predicted, Kidomaru dropped from the branch.

The second he was falling freely through the air, Kakashi struck. His fist cocked, he leapt from the branches ready to deliver a vicious blow to his enemy's face. Kidomaru saw him coming and pulled his arms down. Suddenly, he stopped falling and changed directions in midair, twisting up and landing with his feet on the bottom of the branch he'd abandoned just a moment before.

"Huh," he said with a smile as he looked down at Kakashi, "and here I thought you were one of the main characters. Looks like you're just a miniboss."

A kunai pressed against his throat as Kakashi appeared behind him. "I hope you were keeping score, because you just lost."

"Tsk, tsk, Kakashi-kun," Rin whispered as a kunai appeared at Kakashi's throat. "You _have_ gotten sloppy in your old age."

"I'm only two months older than you," Kakashi pointed out. He didn't pull the kunai away from Kidomaru's throat.

"To the day," Rin replied with a smile, "but October has thirty-one days in it, so it feels like it's more than two months. You seem a lot older, anyway." Were the situation not so serious, Kakashi might have found it funny to be arguing ages with her while hanging upside down like this.

"Really?" Kakashi asked from _behind_ her as yet another kunai was pressed against a throat. "Well, at least I haven't gotten rusty over the years." He shook his head, though was careful not to take his eyes off of her. "I hoped that you wouldn't put yourself in the middle of this fight. If you'd stood off to the side, I wouldn't have had to kill you."

"You knew you had to kill me from the moment you saw me with them," Rin replied softly, closing her eyes. "I wish it hadn't come to this, but I don't think Orochimaru will keep his promise if I don't make it back. I've given up too much to come away empty handed." She let out a soft sigh and then drove her head back at Kakashi's.

Kakashi saw the movement coming, and shifted his own head out of the way, but did not pull the blade across her throat. Rin's kunai was not so kind and the shadow clone in front of her disappeared in a cloud of smoke. She grabbed him by the arm and jerked him forward, trying to pull him off balance as her foot shot out so sweep his legs out from under him.

On the bottom of a tree branch, such a move would have left Kakashi falling through the air, completely vulnerable until he landed. He used the momentum of her pull to carry him through a small jump as he lifted his own legs over her sweep and quickly brought them back up, so they connected with the branch before gravity could do its job. Connected to the tree once more, he spun with his fist up in an effort to backhand her, but Rin's right arm moved up and blocked him easily. Each of them kicked at the same time, first low, then at waist level, and finally up high; each kick meeting the other's halfway between their bodies.

Kakashi's left hand still held the kunai that he'd been unable to kill her with; he started to make a stabbing motion with it, but hesitated long enough for her foot to come up and kick his wrist. Had his heart been into the thrust, or had his grip been weaker, it would have been enough to disarm him, but his relaxed arm muscles and tense grip on the handle caused her foot to simply redirect his strike. The deductive abilities of the Sharingan were good enough to let him see where she would hit him and how it would change where the kunai was headed. All it took was rotating it in his hand while his arm suddenly whipped backwards and the blade slammed into Kidomaru's chest.

There was the distinct sound of shattering metal and the stinging sensation of vibrations that shouldn't have existed being carried up the remnants of his weapon and into his hand. Kakashi's head whipped around, and he found himself face to face with another strange transformation.

Kidomaru no longer looked human. His bushy black hair had lengthened and turned a gray color, while his already tan skin had darkened to more of a reddish-brown. His top arms had a series of spikes running from his elbow to his shoulder and two horns stuck out of the top of his head. And then, to top off the monstrous transformation, in the middle of his forehead was a third eye. It was black with a yellow iris, matching the changes to the other two.

Kakashi looked down at Kidomaru's chest and frowned. The kunai had pierced his shirt, but beneath the Sound-nin's clothes, there was some sort of gold armor instead of skin.

A long tongue slid out of Kidomaru's mouth like a snake and wiped across his lips as they pulled back in a grotesque smile. "My Kumo Nenkin is a form of metal that instantly solidifies once it touches the air. I can secrete it from every sweat gland on my body, making me practically invulnerable." The metal plate fell from his chest, passing his face and shattering against a branch below them. "I think you declared victory a little early; this game isn't over yet!"

Kakashi tilted his head back so he was looking down at the metal plate and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully for a moment. The moment passed quickly and Kakashi ducked as one of Kidomaru's many fists passed through the air that his head had occupied a split second earlier. Squatting on the bottom of the tree branch, he then had to release the chakra hold that kept him glued to the branch as Rin's foot shot forward the second he'd ducked. Kakashi righted himself in the air and reached up and grabbed Rin's extended leg, pulling her down with him.

She kicked away from him in midair and flipped so that she landed on her feet when they hit the branch below. Kakashi pulled a handful of kunai from his weapons pouch and threw them at Rin before instantly twisting to the side as her own projectiles passed by him.

He straightened and instinct brought his fingers together, ready to form any one of a whole host of jutsu that would kill his former friend. Before his fingers could form a single seal, however, he stopped and just stared at her for a brief second.

He'd fought against what he'd known to be true from the moment he heard that Naruto was missing. He didn't want to do it, but he really seemed to have no choice. In this sort of a fight, against these enemies, he couldn't do what he wanted to. She'd said it herself, from the moment he saw her with them, he'd known that he would have to kill her. He didn't want to, but that no longer mattered.

"I'm sorry, Obito," he whispered. His eyes met hers and he did the thing that he knew he had to do, the thing that he should have done from the beginning, the thing that he perhaps should have done when Naruto first told him that Rin was a traitor.

Kakashi killed his heart. He killed his emotions. He killed every part of himself that might care about Rin, that might love her.

His red eye narrowed as he looked at his former teammate for the first time with hatred. She had kidnapped his student, killed members of his village, betrayed them all to Orochimaru. She was a traitor… an enemy.

And he was going to kill her.

Kakashi's fingers began moving. Ox, Rabbit, Monkey. Lightening seemed to explode out of his hand as he formed the Chidori.

"Are you going to use that on me, Kakashi-kun?" Rin asked softly. "I thought you were going to protect me no matter what, even if you died."

Kakashi glared at her. "You _are_ dead. The Rin I knew would never do these things. Obito would never have loved someone who could do what you are doing… and neither would I."

He pulled his arm back and his leg muscles tensed as he prepared to put every bit of speed he could muster into crossing the distance separating them. Kakashi knew what he could do. Rin would be unable to dodge or block this attack. She'd never been as fast as he was and she'd never seen him moving at the speeds he was capable of now.

He let out a breath and pushed off the branch. Half way there, his Sharingan noticed a small shadow moving along the ground far below him. The shadow was far straighter than anything in the forest should be and was moving much to quickly to be natural. Without thinking, he threw himself to the side, but not quite quick enough.

Blood splattered against his face and the branch below him as a wave of pain unlike any he'd experienced in a long time washed over him.

"One hundred percent accuracy," Kidomaru chuckled. "Checkmate."

ooo

Sasuke promised himself that he wouldn't think about Sakura, but the act of thinking about not thinking about her ended up _causing_ him to think about her, which lead to him dwelling on her… though he was intentionally very selective in _which_ portions of the last few seconds of their conversation he let come to mind. There was a whole other mess in there that he would work out – or better yet, pray that it worked itself out without any discussion – when everyone he cared about was safe and sound back in the village.

On matters that he was willing to allow to come to mind, he was certain that he'd been very stupid for letting her talk him into this plan. She stood no chance against Sakon. She should have been the one to chase down Tayuya. She should have gone to find Kakashi and see if he could help her track down Tayuya. She should have hidden herself away to heal her injury further. She should have… well, whatever she should have done, staying behind to face someone like Sakon and Ukon was not it.

Unfortunately, despite all the things that he thought she should have done, he knew that she was right about the point of her plan. If they wanted to save Naruto, they had to start chasing Tayuya now and he was much faster than she was. That didn't mean that he liked it though.

He had just had to move fast, that was all. If he could save Naruto quick enough, he would be able to get back and help Sakura. Maybe he could even wake Naruto during the trip back and they could triple team Sakon.

"This time, I'll save everyone," he promised himself. There weren't many parallels between this situation and _that_ night, but there was one very important one: on that night, everyone he'd cared about had been killed and he'd been powerless to stop it; this time around, he wasn't powerless. It wasn't quite a chance at redemption for his past failure, nor was it the revenge that he wanted, but it was important.

It was vitally important, in fact.

It was his chance to prove that he was changing, that he was getting stronger. _That_ night, he'd been too weak to protect his loved ones. This was his chance to show that he'd gained the power necessary to keep his precious people safe.

With his thoughts swirling, he barely realized just how fast he was traveling until his eyes spotted movement up ahead. The movement of red hair and a grey tunic, to be exact (and his eyes were). Suddenly, he was moving even faster.

From the steadily increasing amount of sunlight around him, Sasuke knew that they were coming to some sort of meadow or perhaps event he edge of the forest, though it was impossible to tell which. Sasuke wanted to catch her before she reached it. Once she was out in the open, any comrades nearby might see her getting the hell beaten out of her – as he fully intended to do – and come to her rescue. In the trees, they were at least a little less likely to be seen, even if the forest gave any hidden enemies some added cover.

She was on the high branches, so he went low, catching up to her, but being careful not to pass her since that would make him easy to spot. With her holding Naruto, he had to be careful about how he attacked. Throwing a kunai with an exploding tag at a branch she was about to jump to would be an easy way to stop her, maybe even kill her, but Naruto would take just as much damage.

They'd covered how to handle hostage situations in the Academy, but now that he was dealing with a real one, those lessons seemed far away and totally unrelated. Protecting vital information and the village first – even if it meant killing a hostage – was all fine and good, but Naruto was his friend. Talking about killing a hypothetical person for the betterment of the village was easy to talk about. It wasn't so easy when the hypothetical person became some Sasuke actually cared about in real life. He didn't know what they wanted with Naruto – or, more likely, with Kyuubi – but he couldn't kill Naruto to keep them from getting it…

…but if Sasuke did kill Naruto, feeling about him the way that he did, he knew what it would mean for him. Itachi had killed Uchiha Shisui, his best friend, and he received the Mangekyo Sharingan for it.

Sasuke wasn't Itachi. He wouldn't kill Naruto, even if he had an excuse. Part of it was that he didn't think he could bear the thought of killing his friend, but another part was that he knew if he killed his friend – even for mostly noble of reasons – he would have to live with the knowledge that when he did it, some part of him had been excitedly thinking of what he would get out of it, and that was unacceptable.

With no other plans available and time running out, Sasuke did the only thing he could. He sped up, passed Tayuya, and leapt up onto a branch in front of her, barring her path.

"Give him back," Sasuke told her in a low, threatening voice.

Tayuya shook her head and blew out an annoyed breath that pushed a lock of red hair that was hanging down in her face almost straight out from her head before it fell back to its previous position. "Sometimes, that shit-head Sakon is worthless," she grumbled. She pulled Naruto off of her shoulder and dropped him unceremoniously on the thick branch she was standing on while she pulled her flute from within the folds of her clothing. "Just so you know, I don't spend all my time jerking off like him. This won't last long."

She brought her thumb up to her mouth and bit down, drawing blood. A half-second later, her fingers had formed a series of seals, and her hand was being pressed against the moss-covered branch she was standing on. There was an explosion of smoke around her as three immense monsters appeared around her.

They were unlike any summon Sasuke had ever seen before. They were large, humanoid, but obviously _not_ humans. Was it possible to have a summoning contract with demons or was this some sort of trick?

One of them was without any sort of chest covering, its grayish skin looked out of place and almost sickly amongst the green of the forest. Bandaged to its forearms were what seemed to be small trees that had been sharpened to razor sharp points, two of the points extending a good meter past its hands while a third extended back past its elbows. Its mouth was stitched shut, it had a long dark goatee hanging from its chin, and its eyes were covered by tightly wrapped bandages. Above the eye cover its bald, vein-covered scalp seemed to absorb the sunlight that drifted through the thinning forest canopy; it wasn't entirely bald, however, as long thin hair hung down on either side of its head, though it might simply have been sideburns that had been allowed to grow until they reached past its shoulders.

Strangely, it wasn't even the weirdest-looking of the three.

The second one was dressed in a dark bodysuit that would have looked common place on any ninja… if that ninja was six meters tall. This one carried a club that was probably even longer than the demon was tall. Where the first one was bald, this one had so much hair that its whole face was hidden behind the gray-brown stuff.

The final demon seemed to either be missing its arms or else the bandages that wound their way around its upper body from the waist up to its neck were so tight that they hid the evidence that its arms were actually there. This one also had its mouth sewn shut and its eyes covered in bandages. It might have been bald as well, but it was impossible to tell with the bandages covering the top half of its head. To top it all off, what looked like acupuncture needles had been jammed into the demons head in about a dozen places.

"Do you like my Doki?" Tayuya asked with a smile as orange, zigzagging lines began to spread around her neck and up over her face, before becoming black just like Sakon's curving, rounded ones had. "I'll let you get to know them a little better while I play a melody of death for you. Try not to die too fast."

She brought her lips to the flute and began to play a strange melody. The club carrying demon reacted instantly, swinging its weapon down on Sasuke with such speed and force that he only barely managed to escape without getting crushed. As he landed on a new branch, the melody changed slightly and the other two attacked. Despite the fact that their eyes were covered and they probably couldn't see a thing, both seemed to know exactly where Sasuke was. Their attacks were perfectly coordinated and timed to meet him just as he touched down.

Sasuke leapt over the punch of the one with the long spikes strapped to its arms, grabbing onto its wrist as he did so, which allowed him to pull himself in a slightly different direction as the demon without arms flipped in the air and tried to kick him. He'd hoped that his quickness would be enough to trick them into hitting one another as it seemed logical that such large, powerful bodies would be slow or at least would have trouble stopping themselves once they began moving their large mass in a certain direction. Unfortunately, they were every bit as quick as he was. The armless one pulled its leg back with only millimeters to spare, so that rather than kicking its comrade in the head, it simply completed its flip, landed, and then lashed out at Sasuke again, forcing him start running for his life.

He took three steps along the nearest branch before flipping down to a lower one as the long-haired demon's club smashed through the branch right where he would have been had he not been quick enough. As nice as it would have been to take a second to congratulate himself on not dying, Sasuke almost instantly had to spin to the side as two large spikes, nearly as thick as he was wide, sliced through the air. From there, he had to jump up to what was left of the branch he'd originally been to keep from being kicked by an enormous gray foot.

"You're quick," Tayuya noted as she took the flute away from her mouth for a second, causing the three demons to stop momentarily, "but you can't keep this up forever. If Orochimaru hadn't given me this curse seal, you might have been able to outlast me, but with the power I can draw on now, you're only delaying the inevitable. You'll grow tired long before I'll even break a sweat." She looked up at the sky for a second and said, "As fun as it is to watch a little rat like you scurrying around, I have places I need to be. This melody will be the last thing you ever hear… besides your own screams, of course. The ninth verse, the Turmoil of the Pandemonium!"

Sasuke watched her carefully as she began to play once more. The flute was controlling the demons, that much was obvious, but what wasn't obvious was _how_ it was controlling them. The notes must each have had some sort of command associated with them, if he could figure out what note corresponded to what command, he would be able to read her every move and the fight would be over.

Sadly, that was easier said than done, especially when three enormous demons were trying to kill you.

At the sounds of this new melody, the three demons lifted their heads and began to open their sewn shut mouths – even the long haired one had had its mouth sewn shut, it seemed. The stitches stretched and then some of them began to tear while others actually pulled through the gray flesh as strange, pale-green blood flowed unnoticed from the wounds. Out of the open mouths, three white worms – for lack of a better word – shot out and began to head directly for Sasuke. Each of them had mouths in the front and all along their sides, and each mouth was lined with sharp, hungry teeth.

Sasuke didn't know what this new attack was all about, but he wasn't going to wait around to find out. His hand dipped into his weapons pouch and then whipped a handful of shuriken at the… whatever they were. His weapons passed right through them without even slowing down, never a good sign.

He threw himself flat as the first passed over him, then rolled to the side as a second one flew at him and went right through the branch he was laying on, and then pushed himself off the branch and into the air to dodge the third, arching his back to keep himself away from its hungry mouth. Even as he escaped the front mouth of the last worm, one of the side mouths pushed forward and snapped at his hand.

Sasuke pulled back just in time to keep his fingers… if these things were even capable of hurting him at all. So far, his shuriken had passed right through them and one of them had gone through a branch without even slowing down. It was possible that it was all some sort of trick.

Sasuke quickly looked over his shoulder at Tayuya, almost expecting to find her gone with Naruto, the worms being nothing but an illusion to keep him distracted, but she was still playing. That meant, he realized, that these things were not harmless. They might be immaterial, but they could hurt him somehow.

He didn't want to find out.

'_Actually,_' he thought with a start, '_I _do_ want to find out how they can hurt me; I just don't want to be performing the experiment on myself._'

Sakon had said that they'd heard of Sasuke before he met them and had hinted that Orochimaru had hyped up his abilities. Obviously, Tayuya hadn't heard the hype or didn't believe in it.

'_She's in for a rude awakening,_' he thought with a grim smile, that vanished instantly as he had to throw himself to the side to keep from being bitten, eaten, or whatever by one of the worms as it circled around towards him. For his plan to work, he would have to be extremely fast. If she knew much about him, she'd probably catch on pretty quick.

That was fine. Thanks to Kakashi's training, speed was something he had plenty of.

He felt the chakra building in his legs and then pushed it out, giving himself a huge burst of speed. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed two of the worms were chasing him – gaining on him, in fact – which meant that the third would be...

His body reacted before his eyes even shifted forward to confirm that he was about to run headlong into the open mouth of one of the worms. He took a step with his right leg and pushed off with enough force to get himself airborne. Unlike a typical flip, he didn't bother to tuck his body, instead keeping his back straight and letting his legs continue to move as though he was running along the underneath of an invisible arch.

The moment he touched down on the other side of the ghost worm, he took two more steps, building his speed back up, and then twisted and pushed a fair amount of chakra out of his feet. He'd never tried something like this before, but it seemed logical. When climbing trees, pushing too much chakra out of your feet could cause you to get pushed away from the tree. Doing so while running on a flat surface should push him slightly away from the moss-covered branch, allowing him to turn and just slide along without slowing down too much while he formed seals.

"Katon: Goukakyu no Jutsu!"

The flames leapt from his mouth and burned around the three worms chasing after him. As expected, they moved right through it, but the point wasn't to hurt them. He just needed Tayuya _thinking_ he was trying to hurt them.

Sasuke turned back around continued running along the branch as his hand dug into his weapons pouch once more. Two kunai went whistling through the air, aimed perfectly at Tayuya, but were blocked by the arm of the bare-chested demon. Sasuke almost smiled, he'd thought that they could probably keep moving even with the worms no longer inside of them. It was actually better that way anyway. Two more kunai were sent her way and just as easily blocked and another few were thrown over his shoulder at the worms.

He leapt from one branch onto another, continuously testing the doki by throwing kunai at Tayuya every couple of seconds, watching her carefully the whole time. He moved onto still another branch, practically circling her now. She clearly recognized it because the tone of the melody changed slightly and the club-wielding demon moved to intercept him, already swinging at the spot that he should end up in. At the last possible second, Sasuke hit the breaks, using chakra to glue his feet to the tree so that the club slammed into the branch mere centimeters from where he'd stopped. He only paused long enough for the club to miss him because he knew without looking that the worms and probably the other two demons were already coming up behind him. This was the tricky part of the plan because it required Tayuya to think that he was after one thing when he was really after something quite different.

It was too late to think about altering the plan now; he had already allowed her doki and the worms to get much closer to him than was wise. If he chickened out at this point, getting away would be no small feat.

As the club began to pull away from the branch, Sasuke stepped on it, pushing chakra out of his feet to keep himself attached to the club.

This was apparently something that Tayuya had never encountered before, because he saw her fingers pause briefly in her playing and the melody faltered momentarily. Then she moved to a new series of notes and the club was pulled quickly backwards as the demon prepared to swing it with Sasuke still attached. Sasuke waited until the backswing lined him up just right and then he jumped away, aimed right at Naruto's prone body.

All three of the worms and two of the demons were now behind him. He'd maneuvered himself to a spot where he could strike from behind most of her defenses. The widening of Tayuya's eyes showed him that she was aware of her small blunder as well, but she no doubt also felt sure that even one demon was more than a match for a little genin.

His hand started to close around Naruto's vest, when suddenly the shadow of an enormous fist loomed over him. Sasuke forced himself not to react until the last possible second, praying that this demon would be as controlled as the armless one was. If it wasn't, it might hit Naruto when he dodged out of the way. He just had to trust his enemy to be predictably careful with her prize. As the fist and the two huge spikes it came with began to descend on him, he planted one foot on the side of the branch and swung himself underneath it so that he was running along the bottom.

The fist stopped before it reached Naruto, Tayuya hadn't let Sasuke down.

One more move and then he'd have her.

He came back up behind her as she turned towards him. A kunai in his fist, ready to slit her throat, but she was still too quick. The flute came away from her lips and intercepted his blade.

"Still too slow," she growled.

Sasuke's free hand jammed up into her elbow as he simply let go of the kunai in his other. The sting of the blow and the sudden loss of pressure caused her to fall slightly off balance and her grip to loosen from around the flute.

In the blink of an eye, he had his hands around it and ripped it from her grasp as he kicked her away. The demons and ghost worms stopped moving.

Tayuya looked up at him in confusion. "Just having the flute won't let you control them," she told him with a growl. "If you don't know how to use it, it's useless to you."

Sasuke smiled and brought the flute to his lips, positioning his fingers over the holes. "You should have believed the hype," he said. "Memorizing your finger movements is nothing for someone with a Sharingan." He blew softly into the instrument.

Tayuya's eyes widened as the demons turned on her. She took a shocked step back, but then jumped forward quickly, but not fast enough to completely avoid the worm that had been closing in on her. For a second, there seemed to be an afterimage of Tayuya's right arm and leg where the worm had touched her, but the image wasn't there because she'd moved quickly. It was there for the worm to feed on.

"Shit," Tayuya groaned as she watched the worm feeding on her spiritual energy. In front of her, the demon with the club rose up, weapon raised, and began to swing at her. She brought her hand up in front of her face, two fingers extended. "Tai!"

The demons and ghost worms vanished in a cloud of smoke.

Sasuke played a few more notes on the flute and then spun it expertly around his hand. "I guess I still need practice, they didn't move as fast for me."

"Your lip movements were sloppy," Tayuya told him, "and your notes sounded off. They were barely moving at half the speed I can get them to go."

"They aren't moving at all anymore," Sasuke pointed out, "that was what I really wanted. Controlling them was only a means of forcing you to get rid of them and keeping you from calling them again. Without those things to worry about, I'll be able to finish you off quickly and get my friend back home before he even wakes up."

Tayuya scowled for a second, but then her lips spread into a confident smile as her eyes lit up victoriously. "I don't need to call them anymore, you've been beaten."

A strangely unsettled feeling dropped into Sasuke's stomach. She seemed extremely confident all of a sudden. If she was going to pretend to have this confidence, she should have been pretending from the moment he took the flute. Acting like she had another or something might have given him pause, but she was too good to think that a simple bluff while she was in such a position of weakness would do anything for her.

He heard something in the breeze at that second, though he had no idea _what_ it was that he heard. Maybe it was simply gut instinct disguising itself as a whisper of movement in the wind. Whatever it was, Sasuke listened to it and ducked and twisted to the side, bringing the flute up to defend himself.

A white pole struck the flute and shattered it. Sasuke rolled to the side, just barely escaping injury.

The owner of the pole touched down on the branch so lightly that Sasuke – laying flat against it – didn't even feel the vibrations of his landing. Just as quickly as he'd landed, he jumped to where Tayuya was standing; in his arms was Naruto's body which he gently handed over to her.

With that done, he turned and looked at Sasuke with calm, almost expressionless, gray eyes. In fact, almost everything about him seemed to exude calmness. His white hair lay flat against his head and hung down to his shoulders. His gray shirt was about two sizes two large, and seemed to be resting on his slim body for no other reason than because it didn't feel like falling off of him yet. His thin lips were neither smiling nor frowning. Every muscle in his body seemed to be totally relaxed.

And it scared Sasuke more than he would ever have admitted.

Whoever this person was, he must have watched the fight that was going on just before he arrived. Yet he didn't care in the slightest. He wasn't interested nor was he bored. He wasn't on alert nor was he looking lazy. He simply _was_.

For him to have gotten that close to Sasuke without being noticed meant that he was extremely good, the sort of person who would probably know his limits and be nervous or confident accordingly. For him to be this relaxed meant one thing: he'd analyzed the situation and knew that he had nothing to worry about.

"I am Kimimaro," the newcomer said softly, his voice nearly as detached from emotion as the rest of him. "I've come to formally give you Orochimaru-sama's invitation to join us, Sasuke-kun. He can give you the strength you desire, strength enough to kill your brother and restore your clan to its rightful position in the world."

"I've heard this before," Sasuke said as he stood up, "but I'm still not interested. I don't want that power given to me. I'm going to take it. Anyone who has power bestowed upon them by someone else, doesn't really have it at all. They're just pawns."

"Pawns being used for a greater good, are still vital pieces of the puzzle," the Kimimaro replied smoothly. "They still have a purpose, that's what is important."

"_My_ purpose is important to me, Orochimaru's isn't."

Kimimaro nodded. "Very well. It seems you won't come willingly or perhaps you need to see the sort of power Orochimaru-sama has before you'll understand what is being offered."

"I've seen the freak shows already."

For the first time, Kimimaro's face changed. His eyes narrowed and his lips twisted into a smirk. "Those pieces of trash? They're nothing but poor imitations of what we're offering you." He glanced over his shoulder at Tayuya and said, "Leave." Something in his voice seemed to promise death if he wasn't obeyed.

Tayuya didn't hesitate.

Sasuke started to go after her, but before he could take more than a few steps. Kimimaro was in front of him, his fist already moving forward.

Sasuke flew off of the tree branch and struck the ground with so much force that he actually rolled several more meters along the ground after he hit. He would have rolled even farther, but he ran into something that stopped him. For a second, he could only lay in the dirt and grass, slowly drawing air back into his lungs. Once he could breathe again, he opened his eyes and looked up at what he was resting against.

"You seem to be having a rough time of it, Sasuke-kun," Yakushi Kabuto noted as he pushed his glasses farther up his nose with one finger. "Let's see if we can't fix that, shall we?"

o

o

A/N: Yikes, nearly a week late! Once again, I apologize about the delay. I know a lot of people really look forward to these chapters coming out, so I feel bad that I was so late, but it couldn't be helped. Between a test, a small mountain of homework, my parents coming to visit (and staying in the computer room, preventing me from writing after about 9:30), and a fair amount of my own procrastination (hmm, that makes it seem like the delay might have been _my_ fault, um, pretend you didn't read that part)… well, I was somewhat swamped and just didn't have enough time to get it done since a lot of stuff needed to happen in this chapter.

I'm guessing that a few of you are probably wishing that a little more happened in this chapter… like, say, some closure instead of about four cliffhangers! Yeah, not good. Well, the next chapter will see closure pretty much all the way around as it will be the end of this arc. Gaara's fate, Sasuke's fate, Kabuto's… uh, whatever, Kakashi's fate, Rin's fate, Sakura's fate, the remaining bad guy's fates, and Naruto's fate should mostly all be taken care of by the end of the chapter. Or at least, their immediate fates will be (don't want it to sound like the story is ending and all that's left is an epilogue or something). And after all that, at least a few chapters with no real cliffhangers. See how nice I am?

The next chapter will probably be in two weeks, but I'll try really hard to get it out in one. No promises, because it's pretty dependent on a couple of things that might be coming up, but I'll do my best.

Anyway, excuses and explanations aside, thank you for reading this installment. I hope that you enjoyed it and that the mountains of fighting weren't too boring nor the cliffhangers too frustrating for anyone. Feel free to let me know what you thought in a review. Long or short, I always love to hear from my readers.

Karura – For those who don't know this is Gaara's mother's name.

Kawarimi no Jutsu – "Body Replacement Technique"

Taijuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu – "Mass Shadow Clone Technique"

Tarenken – "Multiple Connecting Punches" or "Machine Gun Punch" (according to the translation I was using for manga chapter 203). Because Ukon can extend his body from any part of Sakon, he extends his arms from his brother's elbow while Sakon is throwing a punch, thus allowing Sakon to punch with far more strength than he normally could.

Shousen no Jutsu – "Mystical Palm Technique"

Doton: Retsudo Tenshou – "Earth Release: Split Earth Force"

Suiton: Mizzu Rappa - "Water Release: Chaos Wave" The user shoots a blast of water from his mouth, similar to the Great Fireball technique that the Uchiha (and others) use.

Kumo Nenkin – "Spider Sticky Gold" This is the substance that Kidomaru's sweat glands produce. According to him, it's a form of metal that instantly solidifies once it touches the air, blocking all chakra.

Doki – "Angry Demons" This is the name of the three beings that Tayuya can summon.

Katon: Goukakyu no Jutsu - Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique.

Tai – "Retreat" the command used to cause a summon to be dismissed… or at least the one used to cause Tayuya's summons to be dismissed.


	41. Chapter 40

Chapter 40

o

Sakon got within a meter of Sakura before she managed to move. It wasn't that she didn't want to be moving, he was just so fast and she was already so tired that it was hard to get her muscles to react as quickly as they needed to. His fist shot forward and Sakura jumped back, just enough to get her feet off the ground and her momentum carrying her away from the blow. Sakon's fist seemed to blur as his brother's hands joined it in mid-swing and all three hands connected solidly with her stomach, sending her flying away from him.

It hurt like hell, but the damage was minimized, just as she'd intended. By getting off the ground, her body had nothing to push against except the fist and so was able to move more easily with it as it pushed her. By jumping backwards slightly, some of the force of the blow had been cushioned.

It was still painful, but she'd handled worse. Anko's punches had hurt more, Sakura thought, though not by much.

Sakura hit the ground, rolled twice and then pushed her hand down so that her momentum pushed her into the air and she landed on her feet. Sakon was already almost on her again. This time she tried to dodge by twisting sharply to the side and threw her right arm up to block, but one of Ukon's fists still managed to hit her, catching her in the jaw with such force that it nearly spun her around. Before she could recover, a foot shot out of Sakon's ribcage and struck her in the chest, once again knocking her to the ground.

As Sakura slowly tried to pick herself up, Sakon knelt next to her, grabbed a big handful of pink hair, and lifted her head so she was looking him in the eyes. "You really are pathetic, you know that?" He brushed his gray hair away from his face and shook his head, "Shit, if I was as weak and slow as you, I'd probably just kill myself in shame."

"Says the guy who needs his brother just so he can land a punch," Sakura groaned as she drew her knees under her body and tried unsuccessfully to pull away from his grasp. She brought her hands together near the ground and tried one more time to pull away, but still couldn't manage it. The painful pulling at her scalp made her eyes water and she had to bite down on her lip to keep from crying out in pain.

Sakon seemed to find Sakura's pain and her efforts to hide it quite funny and he pulled a little harder on her hair to lift her head up as he brought his free hand back and prepared to drive it into her face at the exact moment when she gave into the instinct to cry out. Her face scrunched up, her eyes watered, and then her mouth opened as he pulled even harder.

Sakon's fist flew forward…

…at the exact moment that the ground between them – right where Sakura's hands were resting on it, after forming a few quick seals – seemed to explode as a wall of earth almost two meters tall and at least three meters wide rose up in front of Sakura. The wall caught Sakon's hand that was holding her hair, pushing it up and causing him to rip a large handful of her hair from her scalp (something that _did_ draw a scream from her). With his arm unexpectedly pushed up, his punch was awkward, misaimed, and made contact at a time and place that he hadn't expected. Instead of his fist striking flesh, bone, and teeth almost straight on, it hit solid rock and stone on the side of his hand.

Both Sakon and Ukon hissed in pain as Sakon shook his hand a few times before experimentally flexing it to make sure nothing was momentarily broken. Sakura, on the other hand, was already forming more seals and trying to ignore the sting of the blood that was running into her eyes from the now-bald, bloody patch of her scalp that had once been adorned by beautiful pink hair.

Once Sakon had decided that his hand was fine, he looked up and down at the small wall of earth in front of him, then pulled back his fist and punched it. The wall shattered under the force of the impact.

"You didn't really think I'd be dumb enough to walk into whatever trap you had waiting for me, did you?" he asked Sakura as she backed uneasily away from him.

Sakura shook her head fearfully, tears in her eyes. "No… please…" she whispered as she tried to scramble away.

Sakon smiled cruelly, as he stalked towards her, letting her stay just a few steps ahead of him. "What will you give me if I let you live?"

"Anything," Sakura pleaded. "Please, I don't want to die."

"Anything?" he asked, his eyebrows arching suggestively. "You _are_ desperate, aren't you?" He stepped forward, his foot landing on her ankle, and pressed down hard. There was a small crack as Sakura's ankle snapped under the pressure. She screamed in pain, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Please! Whatever you want, I don't care, just don't kill me!"

Sakon's smile became feral. "Take off your dress."

Sakura's eyes widened. "My… my dress?"

"You heard me. Take it off!"

"You… you want…" she shook her head. "You'll just kill me when you're done!"

"But you'll live a little longer," Sakon grinned back, "maybe if you're really good, you'll even enjoy it. Maybe if you're exceptional, I'll let you live as a thank you."

With trembling fingers, Sakura began to pull down on the zipper on the front of her red cheongsam. Once the zipper had made it to her left hip, she reached up and began to pull the dress down off her shoulders.

Sakon threw his head back and roared with laughter. "You're really doing it! Oh, this reaches a new low. Seriously, don't you have any respect for yourself? I mean, I hope you aren't actually this much of a slut in real life. Geez, you call yourself a ninja?"

Sakura pulled the sleeves of the cheongsam back onto her shoulders and clutched the two sides of the dress in front of her chest to keep it from falling open. "I just don't want to die," she whispered.

"Then you should have stayed in Konoha. Here in the real world, you can't let your guard down for even a seco—"

A hand shot out of his chest and grabbed hold of Sakura's hand as she appeared behind him, ready to drag a kunai across his throat.

"Pay attention, idiot!" Ukon hissed.

"Try taking your own advice," Sakura hissed as she drove the kunai in her other hand into Sakon's back and twisted it as the illusion in front of him vanished. She pulled the weapon out and slammed it home again. As she pulled it out a second time, she looked down and was pleased to see a small river of blood as well as a fair amount of a pale yellow fluid flow out of the wound she'd inflicted. She'd pierced Sakon's pleural cavity and probably even his lungs. Such a wound might not be fatal, but it was very serious and it would render him almost completely unable to fight. If he was lucky, and if she didn't decide to press her advantage, he might be able to find something that could cover the wound effectively enough to find treatment before the injury killed him… _if_ he was lucky.

Sakura pulled the kunai back and prepared to stab him again. She didn't want there to be any luck involved.

A hand slipped out of the Sakon's back and grabbed her wrist before she could complete the motion a third time.

"Sakon, you moron…" Ukon grunted painfully as he raised his head and glared at Sakura, "you keep messing… around and thi-this is what happens."

Sakon made a gasping noise as he tried to pull air into his lungs and then swung his fist around, belting Sakura across the face and sending her tumbling through the dirt.

She looked up and watched in fascinated horror as Ukon stepped out of Sakon and rubbed his back gingerly where she had stabbed Sakon. "This is so stupid," he grumbled. "Get over here and rest up while you heal, I'm going level two and finishing her off as quickly as possible."

Sakon stumbled to his brother and merged with him. As soon as they were once again together, Ukon's face and hands seemed to shimmer with a red and yellow light not dissimilar from the light that had covered Sakon when the strange lines had appeared on his body. This time, however, it covered all of Ukon's face and where the light shown, his face began to change. The Sound-nin's face stretched and sharpened, his chin coming down to a sharp point, and two horns jutted out from his forehead.

The light receded to reveal what could only be described as a monster. Sakura quickly scrambled to her feet and stared in wonder at her opponent. His skin was now a reddish-brown color and his hair seemed to have lengthened a little bit. In addition to the pointy chin and horns, all of his teeth were now sharp like a predator's and his canines had lengthened into dangerous looking fangs. Ukon glared at her with yellow eyes and then smiled at her, looking for all the world like every stereotypical description of a demon.

A wave of killer intent slammed into her, taking her breath away.

"Good-bye, little girl. No genjutsu will save you this time," Ukon promised as he charged forward.

"She doesn't need genjutsu this time," a voice called to them from above. Ukon looked up in surprise just in time to have a good view of the newcomer's feet connecting with his head, driving him face first into the soft dirt of the forest floor.

ooo

Kidomaru smiled as he watched the arrow strike Kakashi with enough force to pierce his body and send him flying off the branch he was standing on. "One hundred percent accuracy," he chuckled. "Checkmate."

Rin's head snapped around and she glared up at him. "What the hell are you doing!?!" she demanded. "We had a deal!"

Kidomaru rolled his eyes. Orochimaru hadn't explained why they needed this shrill woman, but he _had_ said that they weren't allowed to kill her. Actually, he'd told them not to try to kill her, making it sound like she might be stronger than them even after activating their curse seals. From what Kidomaru had observed Orochimaru was exaggerating her abilities. She was good, but she wasn't anything _that_ special.

"Orochimaru-sama doesn't want you dead," he told her. "The real goals of this game are to get you and that Kyuubi-kid out of here. Those were my orders, get over it."

Rin stared at him for a moment longer and then leapt off the branch, landing next to Kakashi who was pinned to the trunk of a tree.

With all three eyes exposed, Kidomaru's vision was about as perfect as it could be. He liked to brag that he could see the wings of a fly from over twenty meters away. It was an exaggeration, but not by much. The truth was that he could only see the fly itself from twenty meters; he had to be within ten to see the actual wings.

What he was seeing now did not please him. Kakashi was still alive. Somehow he'd managed to dodge the attack at the last second. It should have taken him through the middle of his stomach – leaving him to die a quick, but exceptionally painful death – instead, he'd managed to almost avoid it altogether. The arrow had caught him in the side, and the wound was serious, but Kakashi had managed to avoid a fatal blow. Still, he was far from help, chances were that even someone of his level would bleed to death before he could get back to the village.

Rin gently held Kakashi up while pulling the arrow from the tree and out of Kakashi's side. Then she carefully lowered him down onto a large tree branch and held her hand over his side as it glowed green.

"What are you doing?" Kidomaru demanded. "He's the bad guy, damn it! Kill him or leave him, I don't care, but don't _heal_ him!"

Rin ignored him. Sweat was now running down her face as she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to draw more and more chakra to her hands.

Kidomaru shook his head. "This is what we get when we let minor characters start participating in the boss fights." He summoned chakra to his mouth, causing the special glands there to begin excreting the liquid gold alloy, forming another arrow. "Can't dodge this time," he grumbled to himself as he pulled the arrow from his mouth and notched it in his bow. "Accuracy: one hundred and ten percent. Maximum power. Head shots are worth double points."

He drew the arrow back carefully, being sure to aim just over Rin's shoulder so that she wouldn't be hit by anything but blood and brain matter. Before he could release it, however, something seemed to wrap its way up his body, holding his arms and upsetting his aim so that he didn't dare release the arrow.

"Looks like I got here just in time," a voice whispered in Kidomaru's ear.

ooo

Sasuke looked up in surprise at Kabuto as the older genin reached down and helped him to his feet. The last time he'd seen Kabuto, he was getting carried off to the hospital after Gaara had nearly crushed him to death. That had only been a few hours ago, but Kabuto didn't even seem to have a scratch on him. There was no way he could have been healed that quickly.

"What are you doing here?" he asked cautiously.

"I over heard one of the medic-nin talking about a war breaking out," Kabuto explained. "I snuck out of the hospital to see if my team was going to be needed for anything, but before I could find them, I ran into Hyuuga Hinata. She was very upset and told me about Naruto-kun being kidnapped. It wasn't hard for us to track you from there."

"Your injuries…"

"My father is one of the most well respected medic-nin in Konoha," Kabuto replied with a smile as he adjusted his glasses on his nose, "and my studies were strictly enforced by him over the years. I might only have a genin's skills when it comes to most of the ninja arts, but I'm very good at healing."

Sasuke nodded and looked back at Kimimaro who was watching the exchange impassively. Once more, Sasuke was struck by how calm his opponent was. A more nervous enemy would have attacked as soon as Kabuto began explaining things, but Kimimaro didn't seem to care how long the Leaf-nin took…

…because he was trying to delay them from saving Naruto, not kill them.

Sasuke's eyes shifted towards the spot where he'd last seen Tayuya when she'd taken Naruto and hurried off through the tree branches. She was, of course, no longer there, but it had still only been a couple of seconds, there was time to catch up with her if they hurried.

"Are you healed enough to fight?" Sasuke asked Kabuto.

"My chakra reserves are a little low, but I'll be fine." Kabuto's dark, calculating eyes settled on Kimimaro and a small frown appeared on his face. "He won't be an easy one to deal with, will he?"

Sasuke didn't need to answer.

Kabuto scratched his head and sighed. "This is what I get for not staying in bed after that beating I took in the Exam. Father will be annoyed, but it can't be helped." He glanced at Sasuke and then shifted his eyes in the direction that Tayuya had gone as he nodded. An understanding passed between them, as both clearly understood the plan.

Sasuke would go on, Kabuto would stay.

Sasuke hated this plan almost as much as the one that left Sakura behind to fight Sakon. Kabuto was healed, he claimed, but only recently and it had apparently taken a lot of energy on his part to do so. If Kimimaro was half as good as Sasuke suspected him to be, things could go badly for Kabuto in a one-on-one fight.

Sasuke couldn't help but think that Naruto would never have sacrificed his friends in this way… and that Itachi would have.

He let out a slow breath and pushed the thought away. He wasn't sacrificing anyone and he wasn't _using_ them like pieces on a Shogi board, they were just helping him of their own volition because they were all trying to save Naruto, nothing more.

The two Leaf genin made their move on Kimimaro at almost the same time. Sasuke feinted at attacking Kimimaro's feet, while Kabuto seemed to be aiming high. At the last second, Sasuke pushed off the ground so he was attacking Kimimaro at head level while Kabuto ducked down at slashed with his kunai at the Sound-nin's knees.

Kimimaro twisted gracefully, easily kicking Kabuto's hand away while catching Sasuke by the front of the shirt and preparing to throw him to the side. Sasuke grabbed onto Kimimaro's wrist, twisted in the air and got his feet on the pale ninja's shoulder so that he was able to kick off in the direction that Tayuya had been heading.

As he landed on the nearest branch, his keen senses caught the sound of something whistling through the air. Without thinking, Sasuke dove forward, his hand catching onto the branch so that he could pivot in the air and land with his feet on the side of the branch, protected from any projectiles, but able to see what was thrown at him.

Embedded into the tree, at about the level that his legs would have been, were three white tubes. Sasuke frowned, he'd seen something like that before, but couldn't remember exactly where. Regardless, he had a job to do.

He pushed off of the tree and landed on the next branch along his route.

Kabuto cried out in pain.

Sasuke's whirled around. Kabuto was standing against a tree, blood running down his arm like a river, while Kimimaro stood before him with his palm forward and what seemed to be a white bone extending from it. The white-haired ninja twisted his hand and Kabuto screamed again.

The Leaf genin tried to throw a punch with his free arm, but Kimimaro brought up his arm and more of the white objects protruded through his skin and pierced Kabuto's hand.

Kabuto yelled out once more as he threw his head back, not caring that he was exposing his neck should Kimimaro decide to make quick work of him. After the initial reaction to the pain, however, his head came back down and his eyes seemed to lock onto Sasuke's. Kabuto shook his head.

"Don't stop! Get going!"

Sasuke looked over his shoulder. In his mind's eye, an image of Naruto appeared, so close he could almost touch his friend. He was at a crossroads and he knew it. Turn back and save Kabuto but lose Naruto, go forward and save Naruto but sacrifice Kabuto. When he'd left Sakura, he'd been able to convince himself that he could trust her to stay alive until he got back, that she would drag her fight out long enough for him to save Naruto and return for her. He couldn't trick himself that way this time, he wasn't sure he could even keep believing that Sakura would be okay. He had to choose.

How much was he willing to sacrifice to complete the mission? To save Naruto?

The image in front of him began to fade and Sasuke made his choice.

_'I'll save you,'_ he promised. _'No matter what, I'll save you.'_

Kabuto pulled his hand free from the spikes and kicked at Kimimaro's chest. The Sound-nin's leg lashed out, blocking the kick and taking Kabuto's legs out from under him. For a second, he was being held up entirely by his impaled shoulder.

Kimimaro brought his hand up in front of Kabuto's face and a bone pushed through his palm, aimed directly for Kabuto's eye. The gray-haired genin closed his eyes and waited for the end to come.

ooo

Temari stared down at Gaara for about three seconds before she realized that members of her village were advancing on her brother, their eyes alert for any sign of movement… or life.

Had she far more time, she might have considered that she had a choice to make. Should she trust that her brother was innocent? That he was trying to turn over a new leaf? That he'd just used up the last of his strength to protect her because he cared about (maybe even loved) her? Or should she accept the claims of the man who'd tried to kill her? Should she allow her brother to be captured or killed so that she could continue to live the sort of life that she was used to? Did she really want to give up the special training, the respect of both her peers and elders, the admiration of the whole village? More than that, did she want to give up those things for Gaara, the brother who had terrified her as a little girl (and even as a nearly grown woman), the boy who was sometimes more monster than human?

It would have been an interesting series of questions to contemplate. If they were in Suna, perhaps she would have found one of her teachers and debated the topic with them (and won, of course). She would have thought long and hard about it, looking at it from every angle, mentally listing the pros and cons of each side of the argument, calculating as many possible outcomes as she could see for either course of action.

She didn't, however, have anyone to discuss and debate it with. She didn't have the time to make a list of outcomes or contemplate the merits of one choice over another.

Temari only had a few seconds to decide how to play it and so she did what she always did in those sorts of situations. She let her subconscious make her choice and resolved to play her hand as strongly as she could.

In the blink of an eye, she was standing over her brother, her fan back and ready to attack. The eyes of her fellow Sand-nin widened as they realized what she meant to do, but the suddenness of her actions surprised them. She knew – even as she swung the fan forward and sent many of them flying away from Gaara – that things would never be the same. She might as well have scratched a line through her hitai-ate right then and there. The Kazekage, her father, had ordered someone's death and she had chosen not only to protect that person, but to attack shinobi who were trying to follow their leader's orders.

There was no taking something like this back.

She glanced over her shoulder at her other brother who was standing with a smaller group of ninja and dignitaries. Kankuro seemed almost as surprised by her actions as the rest of them, but unlike them, he wasn't moving towards her in a threatening manner and his dark eyes were not narrowed as they always were when he was preparing to fight.

Temari drew her fan back once more. "Kankuro?"

His eyes shifted down and to the left and then slowly drifted to the right. He was remembering some feeling and probably arguing with himself over it.

"Kankuro?!?" Temari didn't want to attack her brother, she didn't want to attack _anyone_, but she didn't have a choice about that anymore. The ninja near Kankuro brought their hands up to form seals. She wouldn't be able to just use large gusts of wind, the next attack would have to be of the more lethal variety.

Suddenly, Karasu appeared next to the ninja nearest Kankuro, grabbing him and throwing him at the others.

Kankuro leapt from his spot and landed next to Temari. "This is so stupid," he grumbled looking down at Gaara and shaking his head.

Temari had to agree, but there was no time to think of a better plan, nor was it possible to take back what they'd done at this point.

"So, the conspiracy goes this deep," the Kazekage's voice called out from where there had once been a large number of Rock-nin, though now he was the only thing left standing.

"Father," Temari said almost pleadingly. She hated the way it sounded in her ears, hated the almost sniveling tone it carried, but in this case, it was probably the right tone to use. If their father decided to attack them, they'd be dead long before they realized the danger they were in. "Gaara didn't do this, _we_ didn't do this…"

"You were told to kill Gaara, the traitor, but you are protecting him," the Kazekage pointed out. "Now you think you can claim you weren't connected to any of this? I always thought you smarter than that."

Temari shook her head, trying to will away what was happening. Even as she did it, however, her mind ran on ahead, calculating what was going to happen. It wasn't hard to figure out. They were all dead now. Her father was not the sort who took chances with things like this. He wouldn't let them live and hope that they weren't really looking for a chance to overthrow him. He wouldn't even let them live long enough to explain themselves. They'd been accused and there was some evidence – regardless of how circumstantial – that pointed towards their guilt. A man who was willing to use his wife as a sacrifice to seal a demon into his youngest child would not hesitate to kill his children in this sort of a situation.

Against the jounin and chuunin who were surrounding them, they stood little to no chance, especially without Gaara's power. Against someone as powerful as the Kazekage, their chances of surviving even a few seconds were basically less than zero.

Once he made his move, they'd be dead.

So they had to move before then.

Temari bit her thumb and dragged it across her fan. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu: Kamaitachi Mai!" She reached out and grabbed Kankuro, pulling him closer to her and Gaara and using his weight to give her a fulcrum for her spin. One hand on Kankuro, the other on her fan, she turned in a wide circle, carefully avoiding both of her brothers.

For the second time that day, Kamatari appeared within a gust of wind that she'd created. The previous time, Naruto had done something Temari hadn't thought possible and beaten the attack. This time, Temari didn't want anyone to have to defeat the attack to survive, she just wanted them occupied and out of her way while she made good on the escape she'd created. There might be a few casualties from the chakra in the wind, but it wasn't aimed at anyone specifically and most were far enough away that the force that hit them would be minimal… she hoped.

Kamatari nodded to her and vanished as a tornado erupted around her and her brothers, expanding outward and pushing away trees, rocks, ninja, and the remains of the Rock-nin ambush.

"Grab Gaara!" Temari ordered as she continued to hold onto Kankuro's hand. Her brother didn't ask why, just as she'd known that he wouldn't. Over the years, an understanding had grown between them that when she started doing something crazy, it was usually because she had a brilliant plan… she hoped his faith would be rewarded this time as well.

She pulled Gaara and Kankuro onto the fan with her. It barely held all three of them, but the winds were so strong that it would be close enough for now. They didn't need to stay in the air long anyway.

The winds reached under the fan and lifted the three siblings into the air, carrying them away from the battle site.

Temari turned around as they barely cleared the tops of some trees and began to sail over the forest. Behind her she could see the dust cloud that had masked their escape. It was like an enormous grave marker on the life they'd lived up until this moment. Everything they'd been, everything they'd done, everything they'd thought was going to happen to them was now gone.

"Shit," Kankuro whispered as he too looked back at the life they were sailing away from, "what just happened?"

Temari let out a slow breath, glanced down at the unconscious and bleeding Gaara and then focused her attention on where they were going. They had to find a place to hide and heal Gaara; that was the only thing that mattered at the moment.

"We're missing-nin now," she replied.

Kankuro cursed again. "Maybe we can go back in a day or two and explain what happened," he said with a sigh. There was no conviction in his voice; he was just trying to think positively. It was better than thinking about the alternative.

Temari had never been one to dwell on fantasies; reality was harsh, but it was real. She scanned the forest before them, looking for a good place to land as the breeze they were riding began to die down. In another few seconds, they would be on the ground and then they'd have to find a place to hide as well as some healing herbs amongst the unfamiliar foliage of the Fire Country to apply to Gaara's wound.

"Don't be stupid," she whispered. "There's no going back from something like this."

ooo

Kakashi hadn't exactly been unconscious after the arrow struck him, but the pain of the injury was enough that it had been hard to think of – or even see – anything else for a few seconds. As he came back down from the buzzing cloud of pain and shock, he eventually found himself lying on a tree branch with – unless his nose was deceiving him – Rin kneeling over him. Without opening his eyes to confirm it, he could tell that she was in the process of healing his wound.

Her reason for doing such a thing was harder to discern, but it didn't really matter at the moment. She was still his enemy. She was still standing between him and saving Naruto. She had still betrayed him, Konoha, and Minato and Kushina.

His hand shot up and caught her under the chin, lifting her off the branch they were standing on and sending her tumbling over the edge as Kakashi gingerly sat up and climbed to his feet. He looked over the edge of the branch and saw that Rin had flipped in the air and landed easily on another branch below. With her down there, he might have a few seconds to deal with his other enemy. With luck, that would be all that it would take.

Kakashi turned, looked up at Kidomaru, and frowned in confusion. The Sound-nin had another arrow notched in his bow, but was struggling with someone or something and seemed incapable of firing. It took only a moment for Kakashi to realize that Kidomaru's assailant was Tsurugi Misumi, Yakushi Kabuto's teammate who'd had his body medically modified to allow it to twist like a pretzel if he wanted it to. At the moment, the genin was tightly wound around Kidomaru's arms and upper legs.

Kakashi wasn't sure what to make of Misumi's appearance. Naruto had claimed that Kabuto was a spy for Orochimaru, but hadn't said anything about Misumi's loyalties. It was logical to assume that he was also a spy – since it would be hard, though not impossible, to hide something like that from teammates– but if he was a traitor, why was he attacking someone who should be his comrade? Could it be that he didn't know that Orochimaru was running Otogakure? Was there some deeper game that they were playing at? Or was this another of the divergences from Naruto's timeline?

It was impossible to say, and for the moment didn't matter. If Misumi was a traitor, Kakashi would have to keep an eye on him while he fought Rin and Kidomaru. If he wasn't a traitor, then he was just a genin, and Kakashi would have to keep an eye on him while he fought Rin and Kidomaru.

Kidomaru was doing everything he could to shake the genin off, and the tip of his arrow kept moving around as he did so. Sometimes it was aimed at Kakashi, others it was aimed well to the side. Kakashi's Sharingan very carefully tracked the arrow tips every movement as he hurried towards the two. The last thing he needed was to get hit a second time through pure dumb luck on Kidomaru's part.

As it turned out, it was a good thing he was paying attention. As he neared the point where even his reflexes would have a hard time saving him from the arrow, Kidomaru managed to draw a bead on him for a split second and let the arrow go. Kakashi twisted his body out of the way, ignoring the cries of protest from his injured side.

It was close. Really close.

The arrow hit the edge of Kakashi's vest, cutting into the material but missing his body. Had he not moved when he did, the arrow would have drilled right through his heart. He would have been killed instantly.

"Let him go, Misumi," Kakashi called out as chakra began to gather in his palm. Kidomaru was able to make a metal-like armor from a substance secreted from his pores, but a lightning jutsu would be more than enough to overcome that.

Misumi relaxed his grip and unwrapped his legs from Kidomaru's lower arms. The Sound-nin took the opportunity to reach back, grab his assailant, and throw him over his shoulder. Misumi flipped easily in the air and landed on a branch not far from where Kakashi was standing. His beady dark eyes shifted towards Kakashi and he nodded, drawing a kunai as his muscles tensed in case he needed to dodge another one of Kidomaru's attacks.

Kakashi's red Sharingan eye locked onto Kidomaru and narrowed. There was only one area where things might get dangerous for him. He had to leap a small gap between the branch Kidomaru was standing on and his own. When he was in the air, he'd be in danger of getting caught in one of Kidomaru's webs and if he was caught, he would probably die. After getting hit with the arrow, using the Sharingan for this long, and already having used Chidori once, he had already used up about half of his chakra, maybe more. If he was caught in the web, he might be able to cut through it with Chidori and he would probably have enough chakra to form one more, but it would most likely be one of the last conscious things he did… and there was still Rin to deal with.

Kakashi reached up and pulled his hitai-ate down over his left eye as he opened his right. He needed to save all the chakra he could and he didn't think he needed the Sharingan to finish off Kidomaru. His fingers formed the proper seals as he chanced a glance down at Rin, drawing Misumi's attention to her so that he would be warned of the other enemy in the area. She was still standing on the branch a little ways below him, staring up at him with a strange expression on her face.

Kakashi finished forming the seals and there was a puff of smoke as another Kakashi appeared next to him. They looked at each other briefly and then took off in opposite directions, not charging straight at Kidomaru, but circling around him, trying to get to the tree his branch was connected to so they wouldn't have to make the dangerous straight ahead jump of the gap between him and them.

Kidomaru seemed to grasp this instantly and he quickly reached up to his mouth to draw another arrow. Kakashi picked up speed. Kidomaru notched his arrow and began to draw it back, but before he could fire three kunai struck him in the back from the Kakashi on the opposite side. The kunai bounced off harmlessly, thanks to the metal plate that Kidomaru had formed across his back, but they were distracting enough that when he rushed his shot and missed by a few centimeters.

One Kakashi reached the tree first, turning onto the branch and running straight at Kidomaru. The Sound-nin notched another arrow and prepared to fire it from point blank range, but Kakashi changed his trajectory so that he was running along the underneath of the branch. Kidomaru instead fired at the other Kakashi who was still circling, but that Kakashi was able to duck behind a tree. That didn't matter to Kidomaru, he'd fired the arrow with enough force to pierce something as flimsy as a meter thick tree trunk. The wood shattered under the force of the attack, but before he could confirm that he'd taken care of one Kakashi, the other appeared behind him, a kunai clutched tightly in his fist as he jerked Kidomaru around and drove it into the Sound-nin's third eye right in the middle of his forehead.

"No pores here," Kakashi said with a smirk.

Kidomaru screamed in pain as the tip of the kunai pierced his eye, but his pain wasn't enough to slow his reflexes. Two hands grabbed hold of Kakashi's arm, keeping the kunai from getting any farther into his head than his eye socket. A second set of hands grabbed hold of Kakashi's other arm, keeping it from attacking him with whatever else he might have planned. His third set of hands reached up to his mouth as he spit something into them. The substance solidified into the basic shape of a short sword.

"Ugh, you piss me off," Kidomaru growled as one of his hands let go of each of Kakashi's arms and grabbed the jounin by the shoulders. Blood ran down between his two hate-filled eyes as he pulled the sword back and yelled, "Game over!"

Kakashi's eye widened in shock and pain as the sword stabbed into his chest and then he vanished in a cloud of smoke and lightning.

Kidomaru cried out once more and then fell away from the clone, his body smoking as it began to shift back into his natural form. He lay motionless for a few seconds and then groaned as he slowly began to stir.

"What the hell was that? " he grumbled as he sat back up. "A lightning clone?" He looked at the scorch mark on the bark where he'd been standing. "Random abilities popping up all over the place… seems kind of cheap if you ask me…"

The branch bounced just slightly underneath him and he turned to look back towards the tree trunk. Kakashi's fist caught him in the face, sending him off the branch and into the thick trunk of another tree. Kidomaru was unconscious before he peeled away from the tree and fell the rest of the way to the ground.

Kakashi didn't have time to watch him fall; he was already turning his attention to Rin. Motion caught his attention before his peripheral vision had sent the signal to his brain that Rin was no longer on the branch she'd been standing on. Rin was standing across from Misumi who was running forward to attack her.

Kakashi yelled for him to stop, but it was already too late. Rin's fingers formed seals as Misumi's hand grabbed her arm, slithering around it like a snake, and then Misumi toppled over as though he'd been grabbed by invisible wires. Rin's face was strangely solemn as she looked down at the fallen genin, and then her sad eyes rose until they met Kakashi's as her hand glowed ominously green. She looked down at Misumi and knelt next to him.

Kakashi ran to the edge of the branch and leapt towards her. Rin didn't look up as she reached down, placed her hand against Misumi's chest, and then pushed into it.

Misumi awoke instantly from the genjutsu and he tried to scream in pain. The sound was cut off before it ever left his lips. Rin pulled her blood soaked hand from the young man's chest and let her eyes drift up to meet Kakashi's just as he tackled her off of the branch.

The two former teammates fell through the air, twisting, punching, and kicking as they tried to fight while avoiding branches. Kakashi managed to roll her underneath him as they crashed through one of the smaller branches on their way down, but Rin lifted her knee just before they hit so that the force of the impact drove her knee into his gut.

When they hit the next branch, neither had the strength to fight nor the awareness to brace themselves for the impact. A second later, they slammed into the soft dirt of the forest floor and lay still.

Kakashi was the first to stir, letting out a soft groan as he pulled his hands under his body and slowly lifted his head so that he could check to see if Rin was still alive.

She was.

He let out a painful breath and forced his aching, weary muscles to push him up onto his knees.

Rin rolled onto her back and then slowly pushed against the ground with her feet until her head ran into a root rising out of the ground. Another round of pushing and she was into a sitting position.

"I saved you," she whispered.

"You shouldn't have," Kakashi replied honestly.

"Do you hate me?"

Kakashi was silent for a moment. "Yes."

"Do you think Obito-kun will?"

Kakashi forced himself to his feet and nearly ended up on his back again. He was broken – in more than one place from the feel of things – but he could stand. He wouldn't be able to help Sasuke and Sakura, but he felt he had enough to make sure that they wouldn't have to worry about Rin. "Obito's dead, he's not coming back… and it's a good thing too."

"It really isn't human," Rin whispered as she pushed against the tree root until she was on her feet, though her weight was still mostly on the root, "you must be able to see that."

Kakashi lifted his hitai-ate. "I see a lot of things with this eye Obito gave me, but not that. Naruto is not the Kyuubi, he's sensei's son."

Rin shook her head. "You're as thickheaded as ever, I see," she said with a sigh. She was quiet for a moment and then added, "You're bleeding again."

"It will heal."

Rin smiled sadly. "Is this the part where we fight?"

"This is the part where I kill you."

"You think you can?"

Kakashi stared her right in the eyes. "You tell me."

Rin nodded. "Yes, I suppose you can." She leaned forward so that all of her weight was on her own feet. "Can you do me one favor, for old time's sake?" she asked as she brought her arms up in front of her. "If you land a fatal blow, but I'm not quite dead… don't look at me with that expression on your face. I'd like my last memory of you to be more pleasant."

Kakashi's throat bobbed as he swallowed an inappropriate emotion that was trying to surface. "I promise you that you won't even feel the last blow… but don't ask for mercy from me."

Rin's smile became a little more genuine. "You always were such a _considerate_ boy." She lifted her left foot, placing it against the tree root behind her, and pushed off, propelling herself towards him with more speed than she might otherwise have been able to manage.

Before Kakashi's Sharingan, her speed was nothing. He twisted to the side just before her punch could reach him, batting her arm up into the air and then lifting his knee, driving it into her stomach. Rin doubled over and gasped as all the air was pushed momentarily from her lungs. Kakashi's foot lashed out, kicking her legs out from under her. As she fell backwards, he could almost see her death as it would happen, but at the last second she arched her back, planted her hands and spun as her legs kicked out.

He hadn't seen it coming and her foot caught him across the face, spinning him around. He accepted the spin and dropped low, his own leg lashing out and catching her at the elbow. With a loud crack, Rin went down, her left arm broken.

She rolled quickly to her feet, making it up almost before Kakashi could, but the fight was now over and both of them knew it. She'd always been weaker than him in almost every area outside of healing. Genjutsu was her forte, but even there he'd always been a little better than her. Taijutsu was her second best skill, but he'd always been her superior in that area as well. With a broken arm, she couldn't form seals, she couldn't block his attacks, she couldn't do anything accept try to run away.

She wasn't running.

She reached into her weapons pouch with her good hand and whipped two kunai at him, but he simply leaned a bit to the side and they sailed over his shoulder. Rin charged forward, her broken arm flapping behind her like the tail of a kite. She kicked and he blocked. She punched and he turned it away. A kick aimed at his head and he twisted to the side, one of his arms shifting backwards as chakra swirled in his palm. She punched and he ducked under it and threw his arm forward, the swirling blue ball in his palm slamming into her stomach.

"Rasengan!"

Rin didn't even cry out in pain as she was sent flying into one of the large roots of the great trees that towered over them, watching their battle. She slumped forward, but didn't fall. Her small hands slowly rose up to her stomach and touched the exposed, burned skin.

"Sensei's technique," she said softly, "but you didn't do it very well. It should have killed me."

Kakashi's fingers flashed through a series of seals and then dropped his hand as lightning exploded around him. He lifted his gaze to meet hers. "This will be the last attack," he promised as he ran forward.

Rin's eyes didn't leave his for one second as he charged at her. She didn't look scared or even regretful. She'd accepted her fate, maybe even anticipated it. A part of Kakashi that was supposed to be dead was glad that Obito wasn't around to see this. That same part wanted him to close his eyes so _he_ wouldn't have to see what he was about to do.

Just as he reached her, Rin smiled. "I like those eyes," she whispered, "thanks."

Kakashi's hand flashed forward.

ooo

The bone protruding from Kimimaro's palm pushed forward, cracked Kabuto's glasses, and then two strong hands grabbed Kimimaro from behind and pulled him away. Sasuke twisted and threw the Sound-nin over his shoulder with as much force as he could.

The bone that had impaled Kabuto's shoulder broke off and stayed in the tree. Sasuke watched as Kimimaro flipped in the air and landed gracefully on his feet a short distance away. Without taking his eyes off of his enemy, he reached back and pulled the bone from Kabuto's shoulder and the tree behind him. Kabuto screamed once more in pain and then slide down into the dirt.

"How bad is it?" Sasuke asked, still watching Kimimaro.

"I'll live," Kabuto replied shakily. "I'm good at healing, but apparently not much else." He let out a slow breath and then slowly rose to his feet once more. "Why did you come back? What about Naruto-kun?"

"I won't sacrifice my comrades this way," Sasuke replied, his red eyes narrowing. "I'll save Naruto, but I won't do it when it costs you and Sakura your lives. If they were just going to kill him, they wouldn't have gone through this much trouble. There's still time."

"If you join us, you could go and see Uzumaki Naruto right now," Kimimaro pointed out.

Sasuke brought his hands together, his fingers rushing through seals and then he pushed his right arm down towards the ground as lightning crackled around him and covered his hand. "When I find Naruto, I'm going to kill anyone who had anything to do with kidnapping him," he promised.

"How sure are you that we kidnapped him?" Kimimaro replied calmly. "Perhaps Uzumaki Naruto has simply taken up the same offer Orochimaru-sama extended to you."

"Naruto wouldn't do that."

"Do you really know your friend that well?"

"Yes."

A small smile spread across Kimimaro's pale face. "Jinchuriki live hard lives, hated and feared. They have unimaginable power, but usually lack the will or ability to properly use it. Some lash out, some try to pretend to be what they are not, and others… others fight to control their power so they can become stronger than any ninja that has ever come before them. Which category does your friend fall into?"

Sasuke felt something within him quiver. It wasn't that he thought Naruto would betray them like this, he didn't, but Naruto had said on more than one occasion that he was going to be Hokage, the strongest Hokage ever. If those were the categories that people who had things inside of them like Naruto, then Naruto was obviously a member of the last group… but Naruto had never been one so easily categorized, had he?

Kimimaro's pale green eyes met Sasuke's red Sharingan and he shook his head. "Haven't you noticed it?" he asked softly. "I know your friend has been getting stronger and stronger, didn't you find that odd? At this point, he's outgrown your village. This is the next step for him. It can be the next step for you as well."

A tremor ran up Sasuke's hand and down his spine. It couldn't be true, could it? He _had_ noticed Naruto's growth. He'd been noticing it for a while now. He'd even gone so far as to follow Naruto to see what his secret was. Rather than finding his answer, however, he'd found Naruto helping Hinata with her tree climbing and had gotten distracted trying to learn the ability on his own. After that, he and Naruto had become better friends and then the Chuunin Exam came up and he just never had time to really dwell on Naruto's growth.

He remembered that not long after they'd become Team Seven Naruto had used a jutsu Sasuke had never seen before and then claimed a 'friend' had taught it to him. He remembered wondering if Hinata had some sort of Hyuuga technique to help improve ninja that she had given to Naruto. If it wasn't the Hyuuga who were helping him, perhaps it was Orochimaru.

For a moment he swallowed hard, visions of a different betrayal dancing before his eyes. Was it possible that another person he'd cared about was betraying him? Until Naruto and Sakura, he'd held everyone at a distance for just this reason, and now…

Sasuke shook his head, and lifted the Chidori in his hand until it was perpendicular to his body. "Naruto is my friend," he told Kimimaro as the shadows caused by the blue bolts of lightning danced along his face. "You've taken him and I want him back. If he chose this, fine, but _he_ has tell me before I'll believe it."

He didn't wait for a response. He didn't think there was anything Kimimaro could say that would change how he felt or what he was going to do. Whether he was lying or telling the truth, Kimimaro and his companions had attacked Leaf shinobi, they'd taken Naruto, and they were standing between Sasuke and his friend. When Kimimaro was beaten and Naruto was safely back in Konoha, _then_ he would worry about whether or not the Sound-nin was telling the truth. Once they were all safe, he would sit Naruto down (by force if need be) and demand answers, but not before.

He could feel it eating at the back of his mind already, but it was something he could ignore until the time was right.

Sasuke charged straight ahead, the Chidori chirping like a great flock of birds.

Kimimaro's shirt slipped off his left shoulder and he reached up with his right hand and grabbed a bone as it pushed through his skin. He pulled it out with a flourish and the skin knit itself back together. "Behold, the Dance of the Camellia."

Sasuke's hand shot forward, but Kimimaro drifted almost casually to the side and then began to swing his sword at Sasuke's midsection, ready to cut him in half. Sasuke saw it coming, however, and leapt over the swipe. He landed just on the other side of Kimimaro, spun and again thrust the Chidori towards his enemy, but Kimimaro ducked and his leg whipped out, taking Sasuke's feet out from under him.

Sasuke saw the sword coming towards him once more and did the only thing he could think of. He pushed the Chidori into the dirt as he fell.

The ground exploded around them, sending both ninja flying in opposite directions as a large cloud of dust filled their area of the forest. Each twisted in the air and landed on his feet.

Sasuke covered his mouth with his sleeve and took two quick breaths to try to slow his heart. It had been really close. All that speed he'd gained from training with Kakashi and Kimimaro had come within centimeters of killing him on their first encounter.

He needed some sort of plan, but before he could come up with anything, the dust in front of him parted and the white-haired Sound-nin erupted from within it.

Sasuke's Sharingan tracked the tip of the bone-sword wherever it went, but his body was still having trouble keeping up with the speed. Twice the sword managed to cut into his chest, not deep, but enough to draw blood. He tried leaping away, but Kimimaro stayed right with him, never letting up for a second. Every time Sasuke tried to fight back, Kimimaro bobbed and weaved, not even allowing a single punch or kick to touch him. It was like he was dancing, floating on an unseen breeze. Sasuke would swing, but the air currents flowing around his hands and feet would carry Kimimaro with them.

Sasuke started fighting a defensive battle, hoping that there would be a mistake or something that he could capitalize on if only he waited long enough.

The moment he was looking for came only a few seconds later. Kimimaro telegraphed a stab with his sword and Sasuke ducked under it, ready to unleash all of his strength on his opponent's unprotected stomach. His peripheral vision caught the shifting of muscles under Kimimaro's pale skin and he surrendered himself to his instincts, diving out of the way as the sword that had passed over his shoulder was turned and nearly brought into his back.

Sasuke planted his hands into the ground, rolled, and then flipped up to his feet, narrowly avoiding Kimimaro's backhand swipe with his sword. While he was still in the air, Sasuke was already forming seals. "Katon: Goukakyu no Jutsu!"

The fireball erupted from his mouth and all Kimimaro could do was turn away from the flames that would consume him.

Sasuke held the jutsu for as long as he could and then drew a kunai to be ready for whatever attack might come next. A jutsu like that from such close range should have been enough to kill a normal ninja, but Kimimaro was obviously no normal ninja.

As if to prove the point, the smoke cleared and there stood Kimimaro, his back to Sasuke and what was probably his shoulder blades extending from his skin and expanded out to the point where they looked like the wings of an angel. The bones shrunk and reentered Kimimaro's skin, which quickly sealed the cut, and the Sound-nin turned towards Sasuke, a large portion of his white shirt had been turned to ash and the rest had been badly ripped by the extension of the bones. Kimimaro shifted his shoulders and the tattered remains of the shirt fell from them.

"You're good," he complimented honestly. "To have come that close to hurting me… few have managed it."

Sasuke didn't miss the fact that Kimimaro was still declaring himself to be unharmed, something that Sasuke couldn't claim.

Kimimaro dropped his sword and then spread his fingers. Bones grew out from his palms, elbows, knees, and shoulders. "The Dance of the Willows," he whispered. "I'm sorry that you are going to see it, I don't think Orochimaru-sama will have much use for you when it is over."

He came at Sasuke again, but his attacks were completely different. Rather than charging straight ahead, swinging a sword back and forth, Kimimaro was now all over the place. Sometimes he attacked from the right, sometimes he twisted to the left, and sometimes he flipped over Sasuke and tried to attack from the rear. What was even worse was the fact that he didn't have to actually be swinging his hands at Sasuke to cut him. Several of the worst cuts Sasuke received came when he thought he'd avoided the closest bones only to have them extend slightly to make up the difference.

There seemed to be no rhyme or reason behind Kimimaro's movements; he just went wherever instinct, the wind, or pure chance seemed to take him. Sasuke's eyes could follow the movements, but his body couldn't react to the randomness of it all nearly quick enough.

He was doing the best that he could and avoiding more than he was getting hit with, but it would only be a matter of time before the blood loss from the dozens of small – and a few large – cuts began to add up. If he was going to save Naruto, Sakura, Kabuto, or even himself, something had to give. He had to find an opening, spot a pattern, or just seize the right moment and attack, but there didn't seem to be any opening, pattern, or right moment to be found in Kimimaro's attacks.

Sasuke took a stinging swipe across the chest that he barely managed to keep from being far worse. It was enough, however, that he instinctively winced, his eyes narrowing and briefly loosing their focus on Kimimaro. At the second, the Sound-nin kicked out, taking Sasuke's feet out from under him. A sharp bone rose to impale him, but Sasuke managed to reach down, grab it by its middle and used it as a pivot, twisting his body away from the attack.

He landed and Kimimaro hand shot forward. Sasuke tried to twist away once more, but was a fraction of a second too slow. The razor sharp bone cut into his side and came out behind him. He'd come close enough to dodging it that he didn't think any organs had been hit, but that wasn't much of a consolation as the bone ripped sideways out of him.

Sasuke fell back and for once, Kimimaro didn't pursue him right away; he could feel the blood seeping from his body, robbing him of his strength, but there was little he could do to stop it. He brought his hand up and felt the large wound, wincing at the pain of even touching it.

_'I'm supposed to be a genius,'_ he thought to himself. _'These "eyes" are supposed to be the best. _I'm_ supposed to be the best. The Sharingan can see through any jutsu, can track movements that no other eye could follow. I just have to focus. Like Kakashi showed me. See his movement; predict what comes next… read him!'_

Sasuke twisted to the side as Kimimaro's hand shot forward, the spiky bone barely missing his face. His eyes caught a twitch of muscle tension and he ducked as Kimimaro's arm changed direction. His head had scarcely slipped below the swipe when he rolled to the side as he saw his enemy's knee begin to move towards him.

He came up on his feet and turned towards Kimimaro just in time to see the Sound-nin's bone puncture his head.

Sasuke blinked.

Kimimaro's bone came at him, right at head level.

Sasuke twisted his head to the side at the last second.

His hitai-ate flew through the air, accompanied by a fair amount of blood.

Sasuke reached up and wiped at the blood that was dripping down into his eyes. The bone had cut across his forehead starting just under his hitai-ate and continuing, as he tried to dodge, all the way up to his hair line. _'What was that?'_ he wondered as he rolled away from any potential follow up attack. _'I saw it… he… it was like a ghost image moving out in front of him.'_

He turned towards Kimimaro and saw the image again. It wasn't a ghost though; it was the energy Kimimaro was exerting. He could see where it was going and predict where it would carry his enemy. The image stabbed forward again, but this time Sasuke waited until the real Kimimaro started to catch up. At the last second, he shifted his head to the side and the bone passed harmlessly over his shoulder as his hands thrust forward, striking Kimimaro in the chest and sending him tumbling away.

Sasuke's eyes widened, the three black tomoe they now sported standing out against the red of his iris. He could see it now. When Kimimaro moved, even as graceful and controlled as his movements were, his energy was forced to move in the direction that he would go and his muscles had to move that direction as well. Kimimaro was the most flawless fighter Sasuke had ever seen outside of Itachi, but no one could move without giving subtle hints as to where they'd go. The hints could be minimized, even hidden from normal eyes, but they had to be there.

And Sasuke could see them now. His eyes could track the movements and the flow of chakra and his brain produced an image of what Kimimaro's next move would be.

Kimimaro rose and looked at him curiously. "Your body is getting used to my movements already. I can see what Orochimaru-sama finds you so interesting, but you are still not at my level. You haven't seen me yet." He lifted his hands, pointed his fingers at Sasuke and said, "Teshi Sendan!"

Bones from his fingers shot towards Sasuke, making a wide spread that would catch him even if he dodged. Sasuke wasn't waiting to try to dodge, he was already dodging. When Kimimaro's hands came up, Sasuke was already starting to pull chakra into his legs. When Kimimaro's chakra rushed to his fingers and forced the bones within them to shoot out, Sasuke was already moving. When the projectiles were half way to Sasuke, he'd already escaped their impact zone and was turning towards Kimimaro.

The white-haired ninja had a brief second to look surprised before he was sent flying into a near by tree by Sasuke's kick.

Sasuke ran his hand up the middle of his face, wiping away the blood that was running down between his eyes and over his nose. He spread his fingers so that his eyes could be seen peering out at Kimimaro between them.

"I see you now," he whispered.

ooo

Sakura looked down at Ukon who had been pretty effectively planted into the ground and then up at the man who was standing on top of him. He was tall, at least as tall as Kakashi, with strong muscular arms and a face that was half-covered by a loose mask and dark glasses, a bandana style Leaf hitai-ate covered the top of his head. She'd seen him before, she was pretty certain, but his name eluded her.

"Are you alright?" the Leaf-nin asked her.

Sakura nodded. "You were in the Chuunin Exam," she said as her brain placed what little of his face could be seen. "Aren't you on Kabuto-san's team?"

His eyebrows angled down as what was probably a scowl crossed his face. "_He_ is on _my_ team," he replied. "I'm Akado Yoroi."

Sakura still didn't recognize the name, but she nodded. "What are you doing here?"

Before Yoroi could answer, Ukon shifted beneath him and then two arms rose up out of the Sound-nin's back and pushed Yoroi away. The Leaf-nin stumbled back, but didn't go down. He stood calmly and watched as Ukon rose back to his feet, and then turned and glared at him.

"That hurt, asshole," Ukon growled.

"Don't worry," Yoroi replied, "you'll forget all about it soon." He glanced at Sakura and said, "You're hurt so just stay out of this as best you can. I'll handle him."

"There's two of him," Sakura told him quickly. "They share a body somehow and the dormant one can move around inside the main one."

Yoroi apparently had noticed the ability when he was pushed by the random hands that came out of Ukon's back because what little could be seen of his face didn't look surprised.

Sakura decided that with Yoroi handling Ukon, she should try to heal her broken bone a little further. She didn't have much chakra left, but every little bit would help. If she could get herself to the point where she could actually fight rather than using genjutsu or ninjutsu that quickly sapped her strength, then perhaps she would be able to help Yoroi.

Her fingers began to form the seals to activate the healing jutsu, but before she could finish, Ukon was upon her. Yoroi apparently hadn't expected Ukon to keep attacking her because he was slow to move to protect her and Ukon's fist slammed into her stomach with such force that she felt certain it nearly came out the other end. Though she wasn't actually impaled, the force of the punch left her almost completely unable to pull air into her lungs as he pulled his fist back and let her fall to her knees. Sakura gagged for a moment and then threw up, her vomit red with blood.

Yoroi finally reached Ukon, trying to grab him from behind to pull him away from her, but a foot shot out of Ukon's back and kicked him away. Ukon glanced over his shoulder at Yoroi as the genin fell back and then returned his attention to Sakura. He cocked his fist back and brought it down. One punch, then two, and then a third. They drove her into the ground, cut her face open, and cracked the bones under her cheeks and around her eye.

Sakura lay still in the dirt, her eyes open, but unable to focus well enough to see beyond the tip of her nose. Blood ran down her face, rolled off of her nose and dripped onto the ground. She could almost hear it splashing against the soft, dark earth beneath her. Slowly, she shifted her eye to the side and let her head roll just slightly with it until she was looking up at Ukon. She couldn't really see his face very well, her eye couldn't focus on something that far away, but she imagined he was smiling down at her. The blurry imagine shifted as he lifted his foot, ready to smash in her skull.

Sakura tried to think of something she could do to stop him from killing her, a jutsu that she could use, a taijutsu move that would get her aching body to roll out of the way, anything. There was nothing, she couldn't even really think.

Ukon's foot didn't make it all the way down, however, as Yoroi tackled him from the side, knocking Ukon away from Sakura. The two men rolled once in the dirt and then Yoroi was sent flying away, probably because of a punch that had come out of no where as Sakon attacked from within his brother.

Sakura pushed herself up until she was on her hands and knees. That was as far as she could go at that point.

Yoroi ran at Ukon, his right hand glowing blue. Ukon twisted to the side at the last moment, as Yoroi's hand grazed his skin, and then ducked as Yoroi tried to kick him. The Sound-nin threw a punch of his own, only to have it partially blocked by the genin, and then tried to knee Yoroi in the stomach, but was blocked once more.

Sakura frowned at the sight. It seemed that Ukon was playing around with Yoroi for some reason. He was moving much slower than he and Sakon had been moving earlier and his attacks seemed to be lacking some of the power they'd once had. She pushed herself up into a squatting position, one hand still on the ground to steady her, and stared intently at the fight. There was no mistaking it, Ukon was definitely moving slower and, from the look on his demonic face, he was noticing it as well. Apparently he wasn't playing around.

"What the hell is this?" Ukon growled. He threw another punch, but this time Yoroi reached up and caught it. The blue energy glowing around his hand seemed to grow more intense and Ukon's eyes widened. "My… chakra…"

"Took you long enough," Yoroi grinned. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd die before you even figured it out." He flexed his arm and Ukon fell to one knee.

"Every time you've touched me…" the Sound-nin whispered.

"That's right."

Ukon smiled. "Every time you touched me… was leading to this moment, when we kill you." The horn on the right side of Ukon's head shrunk down into his skull as his smile grew larger.

Yoroi's right hand released Ukon's fist. Sakura wasn't sure why he would give up his advantage, but it quickly became apparent that he hadn't done so willingly. Yoroi threw back his head and screamed in pain as his index finger on his right hand suddenly drooped to the side and began turning purple. His thumb followed suit and then the rest of his fingers on that hand. Not only did they turn purple, but they began to hang down as the skin stretched bonelessly and the tips started to grow larger until his fingers looked like water balloons hanging from a faucet.

"Fun, huh?" Sakon asked as his head, looking just as demonic as his brother's, pushed out of Yoroi's left shoulder. "I've taken over your hand and told all of the cells in your fingers to explode, but I left the nerves alone. Wouldn't want to miss _that_ part of this next scene, would you?"

The skin eventually reached the point where it could take no more and the bulbous ends of Yoroi's fingers split open, spilling the remains of the tissue in his fingers onto the ground.

Yoroi screamed louder, but it was almost drowned out by Sakon's laughter.

Sakura took a deep breath and rose unsteadily to her feet. Blood ran down her face and dripped onto her dress. A small part of her noted that in another lifetime she might have been horrified that her favorite dress was now a dirty, blood-stained mess. That life was long ago and in a few seconds, she doubted it would matter how dirty her dress got. She would be beyond caring.

Until then, however, she had to concentrate everything she had on getting her legs to take the steps that would lead her to her death. She wasn't sure she could save Yoroi, and was certain that she couldn't beat Ukon or Sakon, but she had to try. She wasn't the sort of pathetic person who could just sit back and watch her rescuer die without trying to save him.

Yoroi tried to reach over with his still good hand to grab at Sakon, but an arm shot out of his back, reached around him and caught him by the wrist, pulling his arm back until he was actually being choked by his own limb. Sakon smiled as his head drifted across Yoroi's shoulders until it was on Yoroi's right shoulder.

"I don't think I want to touch those hands anymore," he said with a chuckle. "It seems you can draw my chakra out through your palms, and that might be problematic, even to me. Fortunately, it's easy to remove your ability to do that… I'll just have the ligaments in your elbow disconnect from the bone."

There was a distinct popping sound and suddenly Yoroi's elbow seemed to lengthen as the joint popped out of socket. This time, Yoroi did not scream, but his brows knit as he squeezed his eyes tightly shut and the strain that he must have been feeling could be clearly seen in what little of his face was visible. He swallowed hard and let out a slow breath.

"Next, I think your eyes should liquefy and then…" Sakon's voice trailed off as his eyes seemed to lose their focus and his head drifted to the side for a second before he gave it a hard shake. "What's going on?"

"You made a mistake," Yoroi whispered without opening his eyes. "I absorb chakra through my palms because it is the easiest place to do so, not because it is the _only_ place I use the ability. If you are touching my skin, I can draw chakra out of you. It takes more effort, but I can draw your chakra away at the point where our flesh is combined."

Sakon's head shifted down towards Yoroi's stomach and one of his arms reached out, trying to climb free of Yoroi's body before it was too late. The demonic appearance shimmered and faded, leaving him looking like a human once more. His struggles became more fervent, but he couldn't seem to find the strength to free himself. Yoroi fell to his knees and his fingerless hand reached up and pressed against Sakon's head.

Ukon grabbed Yoroi's injured hand and pulled it away from his brother. His other hand came to rest of Sakon's shoulder and began to merge with it.

"What are you doing?!?" Sakon demanded. "Don't kill him yet; wait until I'm farther out!"

"Hurry!" Ukon growled. "I'm sick of messing around with these weaklings!"

Sakon pulled one hand out of Yoroi and punched the genin in the head. Then he began to pull himself free of the body he'd invaded.

Sakura's legs hated her for what she was doing, but step by step she drew closer to the scene. Her limbs felt like rubber and she didn't dare let her concentration waver for even one second because she knew if she went down it would be a while before she would get back up.

Ukon's attention was totally on his brother and Yoroi. Sakura was practically on top of him before he even shifted his head in her direction. By then, it was too late. She drove a kunai into his neck, right in the soft spot where the neck met the shoulder.

The jugular, the spinal accessory nerve, the sternomastoid, and a host of other wonderfully terrible things to injure were all located right there. Assuming that his demonic appearance didn't change his insides too much, she probably hit a couple of them on the initial thrust. When he tried to jerk away from her, causing her kunai to cut towards his back until it came out right next to his spine, he probably helped her cut several more things that you really didn't want getting opened up.

His injury was not, however, enough to keep him from backhanding her across the face, sending her crashing to the ground and tumbling through the dirt and leaves that covered the forest floor.

Ukon took a stumbling step to the side, reaching up and grabbing at his injury. Sakon pulled himself free of Yoroi and tired to run to his brother, but found that he didn't really have the energy to do so.

"Get over here quick!" he yelled desperately.

Ukon looked at him, his form becoming human again as well, and then sat down hard, a look of stunned disbelief on his face.

"I… told you… not to… mess a-around… dumbass," he whispered as Sakon crawled towards him.

"Yell at me later; just get over here," Sakon cried as he crawled towards his brother.

Ukon tipped over and rolled once in Sakon's general direction before coming to a stop. "Damn… this sucks," he whispered.

Sakon finally reached Ukon and pulled him up into his arms. "Come on, damn it," he growled. "Just get in me and heal."

For a moment, nothing happened, but then Ukon slowly began to sink into Sakon's chest. "When I wake up, I'm going to kick your ass," Ukon promised, though it was hard to tell if he was speaking to Sakura, Yoroi, or Sakon.

Sakon looked down at Sakura's kunai which was lying on the ground near his feet. He reached down, picked it up, and then slowly rose to his feet and walked towards Yoroi.

Yoroi was laying flat on his back, panting with exertion, his glasses had been broken and his eyes were wide with fright.

Sakura pulled her fingers through the loose dirt until she'd managed to get her hands underneath her. She pushed herself up, pulled her knees under her stomach and slowly rose until she was in a kneeling position once more. One leg unfolded, she pushed down on it, and almost managed to get the other under her… almost.

She fell forward into the dirt and lay there. "Sakon!" she gasped. "I'm… I'm over here. I did it… Come g-get me!" It was the only thing she could think to do to help Yoroi at this point. Maybe if Sakon came after her, walking all the way over, she would have time to get the world to stop spinning in front of her eyes and find a way to get back on her feet. It wasn't much as far as plans go, but her brain couldn't handle any more after getting knocked around the way it had that day.

Sakon looked over his shoulder and, in a deadly voice, said, "Be patient, I'm going to kill you next, bitch."

He fell to his knees next to Yoroi and lifted the blade above his head as he grasped the handle with two hands.

Yoroi could only shake his head. "No! This wasn't how it was supposed to go!"

"Like I care," Sakon growled as he brought the kunai down.

ooo

Jiraiya, Tsunade, Shizune, and Tonton knew exactly where they were going, but they didn't know what they were going to find. They'd run into Kakashi's dog, Uuhei, who had been sent back towards Konoha to give the Third the approximate location of Naruto and his kidnappers. After a short discussion with him, they didn't need to rely on Tonton's nose and could go far faster than they had been.

It still wasn't fast enough, apparently.

They arrived at the first battle site and found a young ninja with a Leaf hitai-ate lying on a branch, his chest ripped open. Tsunade froze at the sight, her eyes wide. Jiraiya touched her shoulder gently, but she didn't seem to even notice the pressure. A tremble ran through her whole body and her large chest heaved as her breathing became labored.

"Tsunade-sama," Shizune whispered as she took her master by the hand and began gently pulling her away from the scene, "let's keep moving. There's nothing we can do for him."

Tsunade nodded numbly and allowed herself to be led away, but it seemed that all of the life had gone out of her in that instant. Jiraiya quickly knelt next to the body and peered at the wound, careful not to get any blood on his hands lest he cause Tsunade to have another episode later.

The killing blow had been a single thrust from the looks of it, though it didn't seem like it had been a very powerful or fast attack. The tears in the flesh, though hard to see around all the blood that had pooled in the wound, weren't the way he would have expected if it had been a fast, powerful strike. It was more like someone had dug their way into the poor kid. Probably reached right in and crushed his heart.

Jiraiya shook his head and stood up. It was a terrible way to go, but once the heart was crushed, death would have been pretty quick.

His dark eyes slowly scanned the area around them until he found another body. He hopped down to the ground and slowly turned it over. This one wasn't wearing a hitai-ate. His head was bald except for a few patches of orange hair and his rotund body looked like that of a member of the Akimichi clan. Around his neck was a strange necklace that looked like wind chimes.

The chimes were enough to identify him as a member of Otogakure, but the scorch marks around his chest – telltale signs of Kakashi's Chidori – sealed the deal. Jiraiya looked around quickly, making a mental note about the location of the body and then continued searching the ground for more clues as to where Naruto might have gone or what had happened to the search party. Above him, Tonton, Shizune, and a reluctant Tsunade were doing the same thing.

A few seconds later, there was an explosion not to far from them and the search was abandoned as they headed towards the noise.

They rounded a small cluster of trees and found Kakashi standing not to far away. The gray-haired jounin glanced over his shoulder at them, his red eye seeming to scan each of them carefully.

"Kakashi…" Jiraiya started to say as he noticed the person at Kakashi's feet.

Kakashi turned and looked down. "I told her I wouldn't show her any mercy," he whispered.

o

o

A/N: I have two apologies this time. First, for the lateness of this chapter. I had two men from Senegal (a country in West Africa) come to stay with me during the past two weeks and one of them took up residence in my computer room. We were signed up to let someone stay with us (our church has a yearly international summit where a bunch of people come and take classes and… well, it's a long story, the important thing is that people from all over the world come to Ames, Iowa), but I didn't know if our house was actually going to be needed or not. I actually thought that our rooms wouldn't be needed until about the day before they arrived… which made for a pretty crazy mad dash as we tried to get things cleaned up for them! Anyway, I pretty much didn't touch the computer except to do homework while they were here, so that hurt my ability to update. I am sorry for the inconvenience, but wouldn't, honestly, have traded the experience for anything in the world. Seriously, if you want to have your eyes opened (particularly if you live in the "West") to what the world is really like, have two guys from Africa come into your house and tell you about their lives.

The second apology is for the content of the chapter. I know I said that I was going to wrap things up so there wouldn't be any cliffhangers or loose ends, but it just wasn't possible in this chapter. At about thirteen thousand words – some of which were very hard to come up with… stupid Sakura's fight – I had to pull the plug. It would probably have taken about another eight or nine thousand words to get to where I wanted to be in this chapter and I don't think it would have been worth it. Conclusions will come in the next chapter… and this time I'm being honest. The fights absolutely cannot be drawn out any farther, so you'll get your resolutions.

Anyway, thanks for all of the wonderful reviews. You guys really make writing this story a very wonderful experience – even when I'm getting frustrated with all of the fights that I have to write but really don't want to! Please review and let me know what you thought.

Doton: Doryou Kabe – "Earth Release: Earth Flow Wall" (I'm pretty sure, anyway). Smaller version of the "Doton: Doryou Jouheki" Yamato uses to create an enormous cliff during Naruto's elemental training. 'Jouheki' means 'rampart,' 'Kabe' means 'wall'… so the grammar should be right, unless there's a rule that I don't know about. Sakura used this one earlier in the prelims of the Chuunin Exam.

Kuchiyose no Jutsu: Kamaitachi Mai – "Summoning Technique: Whirlwind Dance" Temari summons a weasel who used wind based attacks.

Katon: Goukakyu no Jutsu – "Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique" An Uchiha specialty, shoots big flames out of the user's mouth.

Teshi Sendan – "Drilling Finger Bullets" Kimimaro shoots the bones out of his fingers.


	42. Chapter 41

Chapter 41

o

For a long moment, Kimimaro didn't move. His body had been struck with such force that he'd actually cracked the trunk of the tree he'd collided with and was almost sitting within the indenture that had been created. Then his body lazily rolled forward and he landed lightly on his feet. His green eyes met Sasuke's and then he looked over his shoulder with causal interest at the tree.

"What marvelous eyes you have," he said softly. "You _are_ worthy of Orochimaru-sama's attention." He turned back to Sasuke and frowned curiously. "Do they increase your speed or give you some insight into my movements?"

Sasuke right hand curled into a fist, his knuckles popping. He didn't answer the question.

Kimimaro waited a second longer and then shrugged. "No matter. You can see me, that much is clear."

For the first time, Sasuke became consciously aware of a strange marking on just below Kimimaro's neck; three small black crescent lines that all seemed to share a common beginning, as if they were part of a pinwheel. He wasn't sure what had drawn his attention to them, but suddenly they began to shift and grow until they looked almost like thorny vines extending across Kimimaro's chest.

Kimimaro held up his left hand and gave it a small shake. The skin of his forearm rippled and shifted unnaturally before breaking open as about a half dozen sharp-tipped bones pushed out of it. The Sound-nin held up his right hand and waved Sasuke forward.

Sasuke knew that it would be smarter to ignore the invitation, but he also knew that ever second he wasted with Kimimaro allowed Tayuya to get a little farther away with Naruto. If the trail grew too cold…

He attacked, kunai in hand, confident that his eyes would give him enough of an advance notice to avoid any new abilities the strange marks on Kimimaro's chest might grant.

Kimimaro blocked the kunai strike with the bones on his left arm and then tried to kick Sasuke's legs our from under him. Sasuke saw it coming a full half-second before Kimimaro actually moved and leapt over the kick, spinning in the air and trying to slash at Kimimaro with his kunai once more. Again, Kimimaro was quick enough to block and the exchange between them descended into a series of blocks, feints, and narrow dodges.

After only a couple of seconds, Sasuke realized that he was in trouble. He could see Kimimaro's moves ahead of time, but in a close range fight the time between the image and the actual movement was growing shorter. Several times he was unable to fully dodge the sharp bones as they seemed to jut out of his enemy at random times and places. He would see it coming, start to move, and be cut before he could completely escape the path of the attack.

What was worse, Kimimaro seemed to realize what was happening.

Sasuke tried to get away from the Sound-nin, to give himself some space to work with, but Kimimaro stayed right with him, almost continuously attacking.

His arm, his leg, his chest, his back, his cheek, the bones cut into him over and over, just a little each time, but enough that blood seemed to have covered his entire body. He needed a way to create space, some sort of distraction or jutsu or something that would allow him to get away from Kimimaro so he could deal with him from a distance.

Sasuke ducked under a punch, twisted to the side as a bone shot out of Kimimaro's elbow and nearly took his head off, and then spun and tried to sweep the Sound-nin's feet out from under him. Even as Kimimaro calmly leaped over the leg sweep, Sasuke saw something on the ground not far from them that could be his distraction.

A small smile threatened to appear on his face, but it was short lived as he turned back to Kimimaro in time to see an image of bones shooting out of his enemy's toes. They were too close, there was no escaping them this time. He tried to turning his body so that he offered a smaller target, but that was all he could manage before the projectiles hit him.

Two of the toe bones caught him in the left thigh, one came out the other side and entered the right, the other hit his femur – probably breaking the bone – and remained in his left leg.

Sasuke cried out in pain as he fell.

For some reason, Kimimaro didn't press his advantage. He stood over Sasuke and looked down with an almost sad look on his calm face. "I was like you and Naruto once," he said softly. "I was little more than a weapon. I had no direction. When my clan was destroyed and I did not know what to do with myself. I was alone… perhaps I'd always been alone." He looked at his left hand, the bones still protruding from it. "I thought I knew what power was. When Orochimaru found me, he helped me see just how powerful I could become."

Sasuke tried to surreptitiously reach back and get a good grip on the ground as his knees bent and his feet pressed into the dirt. He needed to be able to move at a moment's notice if Kimimaro made another aggressive movement. "Did he give you your kekkei genkai?" he asked.

Kimimaro almost smiled. "No, something much more powerful than that: purpose."

"I've already told you, I don't care about Orochimaru's purpose."

"Then care about your own. Do you really think that Konoha can help you get strong enough to fight someone as powerful as your brother?"

Sasuke scowled. "What do you know about my brother?"

This time Kimimaro really did smile. "I know enough. He slaughtered your clan, killed your parents in front of you, tortured you, left the village…" He shrugged, "Was there any other important pieces of information in there that I needed to know?" When Sasuke didn't respond, Kimimaro let his head roll lazily to the side and asked, "Didn't you ever wonder how it was that Itachi was able to kill your whole clan by himself. They were trained in Konoha, just as he was, they all had your wonderful eyes, just as he did… shouldn't their numbers have been enough to overwhelm him?"

For a moment, Sasuke's eyes shifted to the side and seemed to lose their focus as he considered the idea. Itachi was amazing, but amazing enough to kill Konoha's police force all by himself, in one night, without alerting anyone to what he was doing? If he was strong enough to do it on his own…

"You would have to be stronger than most of your clan put together just to stand against him," Kimimaro said, guessing Sasuke's thoughts. "Can Konoha get you there in this lifetime? Have you grown so much during your training that you would have any hope of reaching that level before you die of old age?"

"Shut up," Sasuke whispered, swallowing hard.

"Naruto has a similar desire, did he tell you? He wants to become the strongest ninja ever, to show all those idiots in your village that he was more than the demon they forced into him." Kimimaro leaned a little closer. "Do you think your friend is so stupid as to think that _that_ village will ever let him be Hokage? The only way he could become Hokage is if he kills all those who try to keep the title from him. Orochimaru can give him that power… and Naruto was willing to give anything to get it. If you turn your back on this offer, you'll always be weak."

Sasuke couldn't seem to breathe. He could tell that his eyes had widened in horror as the possibility that Kimimaro was telling the truth began to creep forward from the back of his mind. Every time Kimimaro told him that Naruto had betrayed the village to gain power, the idea seemed to sound a little more like the truth. He didn't want to believe it, but there was a strange ring of truth to the claim. Naruto did want to be Hokage, he'd gone on and on about it when he was little. It was his greatest dream… and Sasuke knew that it would never come true, not with the way the people of the village looked at him and muttered behind his back. He'd found it strange until today, but now it made sense. They hated the Kyuubi for the damage caused by its attack on the village, Naruto had the Kyuubi sealed inside of him, so they transferred their hate to Naruto.

Naruto wouldn't be able to be Hokage unless he outlived those who hated him… and Naruto was not patient.

But was he the sort who would betray the village?

Sasuke wasn't sure of the answer to that question, but there was one thing he did know about Naruto: he didn't take the easy way out.

Sasuke's eyes narrowed and his grip on the ground tightened. With a kick of his feet and a quick pull with his arm, he was out from under Kimimaro and rolling up onto his feet. "Naruto has plenty of power already. He has the Kyuubi, he can use its chakra, and he's already strong enough to beat someone like Gaara. He doesn't need Orochimaru."

Kimimaro shook his head. "I see this conversation is pointless. You won't admit what you are really thinking about your friend. Your loyalty is admirable, if misplaced. I understand your feelings on the matter. Naruto's friendship is your escape from the pain of loneliness. You won't hear anything bad about him, no matter how true."

The thorny vines on Kimimaro's chest shimmered and began to spread all over his body until he looked like someone had drawn lines all over him. They didn't quite retain their previous appearance, they were a little more blocky with a few random squiggles here and there.

Kimimaro didn't give Sasuke time to admire his change in appearance. In an instant, he'd crossed the distance between them. One hand slashed across Sasuke's chest, cutting him deeply, while the other slammed into his head and sent him flying.

Sasuke hit the ground and rolled until he ran into a tree trunk. He slowly pushed himself to his feet and gave his head a little shake to clear the cobwebs. Half way through the shake, he saw the trouble he was in and dove to the side as Kimimaro's fist slammed into the tree trunk, digging a large gouge out of it. Sasuke rolled to his feet once more and quickly checked his location.

_'Just a little bit closer,'_ he thought as he took a step to the side. Kimimaro's new transformation was troubling. Not only was he now so fast that Sasuke was having trouble seeing his movements ahead of time, but if he was anything like the Tayuya, he still had another form beyond this that would be even stronger.

Whatever happened, he couldn't let Kimimaro get to that point, or the fight would be over.

The Sound-nin attacked with a quick flurry of kicks and punches, his hands seeming to be little more than a blur of movement as Sasuke backed away. A second series of attacks, this time a little slower in Sasuke's eyes. It seemed like every time Kimimaro swung at him, he moved just a little slower and Sasuke was able to dodge a little better. He was still getting cut to ribbons by those damn bones, but he was starting to see it coming again.

He sidestepped a kick and then leapt back as a punch followed it up.

He glanced to the side and looked at a tree that had several little white bones sticking out of it. _'Three more steps.'_

Sasuke stepped back as Kimimaro swung a bone covered fist at him.

He stepped back as a kick whistled by his face.

He stepped back as a punch cut across his shoulder.

And then he stopped and waited for Kimimaro's next attack. It wasn't a long wait. The Sound-nin's hand shot forward and this time Sasuke reached up and caught it at the elbow as the sharp bones protruding out of it nearly reached his face. A new bone shot out of Kimimaro's elbow and pierced Sasuke's hand and he started to fall back, his grip on Kimimaro pulling the Sound-nin with him.

Sasuke's foot came down on something hard and he dug his heel into the soft earth.

The long white bone that Kimimaro had used to pin Kabuto to the tree while Sasuke tried to go after Naruto seemed to pop out of the ground, brushing against Sasuke's hip and then, as they fell back, impaling Kimimaro through the stomach.

Kimimaro gasped is surprise as his mouth fell open, blood dripping out of it. The two hit the ground and lay still for a moment, and then Sasuke pushed the still form of Kimimaro off of him and rolled away.

He rose to his feet and looked down at the Sound-nin, holding his bleeding hand. "You shouldn't go leaving things like that lying around," he whispered. "Someone could get hurt."

ooo

After being told to return home by Naruto's jounin-sensei, Hinata had done just that – stopping only briefly when she ran, literally, into Yakushi Kabuto. She'd explained what was happening to him and then continued home. When she arrived, she found her clan to be in a state of near complete chaos…

…By Hyuuga standards anyway.

Mostly that meant that there was a lot of messengers running back and forth and a few instances were elders and other members of the Main Branch were interrupted by Branch members or younger ninja. Even pandemonium was carried out quieter than Naruto was ninety percent of the time.

Hinata spoke with her father, learned what little he knew – most of which she already knew – and was told that there wasn't any reason to fear for her safety within the village. She considered telling him that Naruto had – possibly – disappeared under slightly suspicious circumstances, but decided that doing so would only restrict her ability to move about the village as she longed to do, so she stayed quiet.

From there she went to speak with Hanabi, wanting to make sure that her sister was reassured about their safety, though Hanabi apparently hadn't been concerned about it anyway. It ended up being a strange conversation as both of them quickly decided that they didn't want to talk about the war or Hanabi's safety and so Hinata ended up quietly trying to think of a way to excuse herself without seeming rude while Hanabi tried to find something else to talk about.

"Father was proud of you when you were named chuunin," Hanabi said at last, nodding towards the vest Hinata had completely forgotten she was wearing.

Hinata's eyes widened, "H-he was?" She supposed that in an abstract sense, she'd known that he would be, but to hear it said allowed, especially after he'd complimented her during the Chuunin Exam, was strange. It seemed like the Chuunin Exam had been months and months ago, despite the fact that it had happened only a few hours earlier.

Hanabi nodded eagerly. "He didn't say it out loud, but he _smiled_."

Hinata wasn't even sure what to say about that. A smile was the sort of praise that she'd been longing for since she'd first noticed what a failure she was.

"You've improved a lot lately," Hanabi noted. "Everyone who's seen you says so."

Hinata hadn't realized that she was the subject of so much gossip. "They do?"

Hanabi brushed her long black hair over her shoulder. "Yes. After today, they'll be talking about it even more. No one's ever beaten Neji-nii-san before."

Hinata felt her face flush. Neji had been injured, it hadn't been a fair fight… and she hadn't even really won. She'd given up first, technically he had beaten her. She tried to tell Hanabi that, but her sister refused to accept her explanation.

After a few more minutes, Hinata finally claimed that she had to meet with Kurenai and fled. She wasn't normally one to lie, but she didn't think she could handle Hanabi looking at her the way she was any longer. Hanabi had never looked down on Hinata the way the other members of their clan had, but she also hadn't looked _up_ to Hinata either. They were equals in Hanabi's eyes. Hinata was older and knew more about politics and diplomacy, but Hanabi was stronger and could use her Byakugan more effectively. Hinata hadn't minded it, really. It seemed to keep any hint of rivalry out of their relationship because Hanabi was supremely confident in her strengths and didn't seem to care as much about the areas where Hinata's strengths lay.

To have Hanabi looking at her with any sort of hero worship in her eyes was almost frightening. Those sort of eyes expected Hinata to be more than she was. They would expect her to do better than she thought she was capable of and maybe even help Hanabi along if she needed it…

Hinata wasn't sure she could handle those sorts of expectations. She could barely handle Naruto telling her she was great all the time and she'd had a couple of months to get used to that.

She didn't go to find Kurenai or the other members of her team, but instead drifted towards the main gate. She didn't know for sure that Naruto hadn't been found or that he'd gone out of the village – if he indeed had vanished the way Sakura and Sasuke seemed to think that he had. It just seemed like the place to be for some reason.

Kiba and Shino found her there about an hour later. Kiba had heard a rumor that Naruto had left the village for some reason and Shino's father had mentioned that a chuunin had been kidnapped from the village while warning Shino to be vigilant as he went about the duties Kurenai assigned to them inside the village.

Their first duty had been to find her, but – Kiba pointed out – Kurenai hadn't been very specific about what to do with her once she'd been found. It wasn't like their jounin to leave instructions open ended like that. Apparently having someone with Hinata was all that she'd wanted for the moment.

As the chuunin of the group, Hinata was, technically, the leader when Kurenai wasn't around. Whatever she told them to do, they'd do.

She didn't tell them to stay and watch the gate with her, waiting for news of Naruto, but they didn't ask her for any other directions either.

After another hour passed, Shikamaru and Chouji showed up, and then Ino came by wondering if anyone had seen Sakura, Sasuke, or Kabuto. And so, every genin from the most recent graduating class, save those on Team Seven, waited with varying degrees of patience by the gate, trying not to look anxious or suspicious as they slowly gathered information on what had happened to their fellow genin.

ooo

Kakashi pulled his hitai-ate down over his Sharingan and looked at the tree root that had exploded when his Chidori slammed into it. From there, his gaze drifted down to the woman lying next to it. She was a mess. He'd seen her in war and in peace; before, during, and after both easy battles and desperate struggles. They'd basically grown up together, at least until they were in their teens. They'd been through good times and bad… and really bad. In all of that, he didn't think he'd ever seen her look as bad as she did now.

It was easy to claim that it wasn't his fault she'd turned out like this – not her appearance, _that_ part was his fault, but her life in general. He hadn't been the one who made the decisions that had led her to this point. It wasn't his fault that he couldn't give her what she'd wanted from him. It wasn't his fault that Minato and Kushina had died they day Kyuubi was defeated. It certainly wasn't his fault that Rin had decided to betray Konoha because Orochimaru had promised to resurrect Obito.

It just wasn't his fault.

But he felt guilty. He'd thought he'd killed his heart when he decided that he had to kill Rin, but this time it wasn't as easy as it normally was. Kakashi was not what he considered a compassionate man; it just wasn't in his nature. He hadn't had a problem with killing since he was a very little boy, even then he hadn't gone through the usual emotional pains that young ninja generally experience after their first kill. Perhaps it was because he'd been there to help his father kill himself or maybe it was because he'd been born cold hearted. Whatever the reason, killing had almost always been easy for him… until today.

"What is this?" Rin asked as she sat up to find Jiraiya, Tsunade, Shizune, and Kakashi all standing over her. Her brown eyes turned towards Kakashi. "Why…"

Kakashi didn't answer her, instead turning towards Shizune. "She and the Sound-nin over there, Kidomaru, need to be taken back to Konoha as soon as possible. They may have valuable information about Orochimaru and his plans."

Shizune glanced questioningly at Tsunade who nodded reluctantly. "It can't be helped," she said. "We need to keep moving if we're going to find Naruto, they'd only slow us down and we can't leave enemies at our back."

"Yes, Tsunade-sama," Shizune said with a quick nod of her head.

Kakashi reached into the canvas pouch on his hip and pulled out a thin rope. He tossed cut it in half with a kunai and then tossed some to Shizune. "Kidomaru should be over there… if you have anything that will insure that he stays unconscious, it might be a good idea to use it. If he was a normal ninja, I'd say that he probably won't wake up for a while, but these guys aren't normal."

Shizune quickly hurried off to find the Sound-nin while Kakashi pushed Rin to the ground and rolled her onto her stomach so he could bind her hands behind her, ignoring the pain he caused her broken arm. When her hands were secure, he reached down and broke two fingers on her left hand. There was no way she could form hand seals now.

Rin accepted the pain without comment or hardly any reaction at all outside of a small grunt.

Kakashi rolled her over, but didn't let her get to her feet.

"Why?" she asked again.

Kakashi was aware of Jiraiya and Tsunade's presence and the fact that they were watching him. "I'm more coldhearted than you realized," he told her. "If I cared about you, I'd have killed you to save you from what you're going to go through when you're taken back to Konoha." He looked in the direction that Sasuke and Sakura had gone. "This is the level of my hatred. You'll spend the rest of your life telling every little secret you know until we decide that you have nothing left, and then we'll execute you."

Rin stared up at him, her brown eyes carefully examining him as he refused to look at her. After a moment, she sighed and let her head fall back so that it rested on the ground. "I remember you being a better liar than that," she said softly. "Obito-kun would be laughing at you if he was here."

Kakashi's visible eye twitched at her accusation, but he didn't respond. He was done with her. Whether he was lying about hating her or not was irrelevant. He was going to hand her over to Ibiki, after that, the matter would be out of his hands.

He looked at Jiraiya and said, "I don't know if I have the strength to summon someone to carry her and Kidomaru."

"Way ahead of you," Jiraiya replied as his fingers began forming seals. He slammed his hand on the ground and a large orange toad appeared in front of him. Jiraiya jerked his thumb towards Rin, "Bon Appetit. There's another in that direction," he added, pointing in the direction Kakashi had said Kidomaru was located, "take him and girl back to Konoha and drop them off at the ANBU headquarters. Shizune will go with you to explain what's going on."

"Well, at least you didn't summon me under a mountain of sand like that blond kid," the toad said with a sigh. His tongue shot out, wrapped around Rin and then pulled her into his mouth so fast that she didn't even have time to look surprised.

As soon as he was on his way towards Kidomaru and Shizune, Jiraiya asked, "Are you going to slow us down much?"

Kakashi placed his hand on his side and turned his body a little bit to test his range of motion. "I'll be fine," he told them, "but I won't be much help if we're fighting anyone like Orochimaru."

"If we run into Orochimaru," Jiraiya told him grimly, "I won't be asking for your help anyway. That fight is between me and him." He was quiet for a moment and then said, "Which direction did the rest of your team head?"

Kakashi pointed and few seconds later the three ninja were hopping through the trees, Tonton doing her best to keep up while sniffing out the trail.

ooo

Sasuke turned away from Kimimaro and headed towards Kabuto, who was sitting motionless against a tree. The gray-haired genin didn't look up when Sasuke reached him, nor did he move when Sasuke knelt next to him.

He just kept staring straight ahead, unblinking.

Sasuke frowned. Kabuto wasn't, as near as he could tell without checking for a pulse, dead. Sasuke had seen death; he'd stared into the eyes of his father and watched them cloud over on _that_ night. He'd even been treated to a genjutsu of Itachi committing his murders. He knew what death looked like, and Kabuto didn't look dead. More like, zoned out or sleeping with his eyes open.

He put a hand on Kabuto's shoulder and said, "Hey, wake—"

Something whistled through the air behind him and Sasuke instantly grabbed Kabuto and dove away as something slammed into the tree where Kabuto had been resting, taking a large gouge out of it. The tree remained standing for a second, but its weight was too much for its damaged base to support. With a loud snapping of wood, it toppled forward, nearly crushing Sasuke and Kabuto as they rolled away.

Despite the commotion and the rolling around, Kabuto remained completely limp, not even making a sound as Sasuke and he tumbled away from the tree. Though Sasuke had managed to save them from the worst of it, they still ended up surrounded by small branches which Sasuke was forced to push his way out of. He left Kabuto behind, figuring that he'd be as safe within the tree as he would in the middle of a fight.

As he emerged from the foliage, Sasuke's eyes quickly sought after and found the source of the attack. It was Kimimaro, or at least bore a faint resemblance to him. The Sound-nin's skin was now a dark gray color, with darker coloring around his yellow eyes. His once white hair was now gray as well, though it retained its limp form from before. Most striking were the six large bones protruding from Kimimaro's back like spikes on a mythical monster, and the long tail that swished back and forth agitatedly behind him. A row of bony plates ran down his spine and along his tail, making him look all the more monstrous.

"This is the power Orochimaru-sama has given me, along with his great purpose," Kimimaro said in a deep guttural voice.

Sasuke's jaw clenched as he stared at the monster. He'd driven a razor sharp bone through Kimimaro's stomach and he'd only activated some new power and gotten, presumably, stronger. What more could he possibly do?

"If you won't come willingly, I'll _force_ you to see what Orochimaru-sama can give you!"

The tail swung again, but Sasuke saw it coming ahead of time and rolled easily out of the way. Kimimaro dashed forward, his arm cocked. Sasuke twisted to the side as the fist passed by him, then ducked and spun away as Kimimaro's tail sailed over his head.

Sasuke frowned as he dodged three more attacks. _'What's he doing?'_ he wondered. _'Is he toying with me? Dragging it out?'_ He slipped easily past another of Kimimaro's punches and delivered a powerful uppercut to the Sound-nin's face. Kimimaro barely seemed to feel it and Sasuke had to hurriedly jump back as several rib bones suddenly popped out of Kimimaro's chest, trying to impale him.

Kimimaro smiled as he reached up and adjusted his jaw; Sasuke felt like his hand might have been broken. It was like punching a steel plate.

A trickle of something slipped past Kimimaro's lips and dribbled onto his hand. The Sound-nin looked down, puzzled, and then hurriedly wiped the substance away, but not before Sasuke noted the red tint of blood.

The brief pause in the fight ended and Kimimaro went back on the defensive, attacking over and over, while Sasuke dodged, ducked, dipped, and dove out of the way of each of them. It wasn't the intricate dance that some ninja battles could be, it was just Sasuke scrambling for his life over and over, but always coming away without being touched despite Kimimaro's best efforts.

After his first effort, Sasuke didn't try to punch Kimimaro again. He didn't think his hand could take another such blow and it didn't seem like he'd really hurt Kimimaro. The only thing he could hope for was that keeping Kimimaro working would eventually tire him out. Already the Sound-nin was moving far slower than he had during the earlier portions of their fight and now his gray skin had a definite sheen of sweat covering it… unless that was just part of the transformation.

Sasuke saw another attack just before it happened and slipped past it with relative ease. He expected Kimimaro to add a follow up attack, but no such image appeared before his eyes and a second later Kimimaro's body was racked by a wet coughing fit.

This time there was no hiding the blood on the Sound-nin's hands as he straightened up and turned back to Sasuke.

"You aren't looking so good," Sasuke told him with a small smile, "and that form doesn't seem to be helping you any. If you ask me, Orochimaru's made you weaker, not stronger."

Kimimaro's lips pulled back in a snarl and then his head dropped forward. A bore rose up from the base of his neck and he gripped it and pulled it free. It looked like it must have been his spine, though Sasuke wasn't sure how such a thing could be possible. The spine wasn't just bones, it had the spinal cord running down the middle of it; how could he pull out the spine without pulling out the spinal cord? And if he pulled out his spinal cord, how was he still standing?

There was no time to contemplate the answers to those questions as Kimimaro swung his spine around like a great spike-covered whip and said, "Behold the Dance of the Clematis… Vine!"

With a flick of his wrist, the whip shot towards Sasuke who flipped into the air to avoid it. Sasuke landed with his feet against the trunk of a tree, standing perpendicular to the ground. Another tiny movement by Kimimaro and the whip shot up towards him. Sasuke rolled forward, letting gravity carry him back to the ground, as the whip wrapped around the tree trunk and cut right through it. Sasuke landed and instantly had to dive to the side as the tree came crashing down after him.

He was breathing heavily now and it occurred to him that he might run out of energy before Kimimaro did. Using the Sharingan wasn't horribly taxing, but it would catch up with him eventually. He felt like every millimeter of his body was cut or bruised or both and he was covered in blood and dirt. He'd been running at top speed for a while and fighting for a long time. Much as he hated to admit it, he was nearing his limit.

He had to finish this fight as quickly as possible.

Kimimaro coughed again, worse than before. Sasuke's fingers were moving before the first drop of blood had reached the Sound-nin's hands. He was going to have to be quicker than he'd ever been before it he wanted to get finished in time. Chakra began to gather in his palm as it converted to lightening. He could feel his body's energy being drained away by the strain of the jutsu, but he no longer cared.

If he was going to save Naruto, if he was going to prove that Kimimaro was lying about Naruto, if he was going to have time to save Sakura, he had to do it now. There was no more time to waste, no more hoping for a plan or an opening or a chance to steal the momentum from Kimimaro. Sasuke was going to have to grab his victory through force of will and straight up power.

Kimimaro's tail started moving before the Chidori was completed. Sasuke saw its path moving well ahead of the real thing. He could see where it would turn so that the spikes would be facing him. Kimimaro wasn't playing with him – for the first time since their fight began – he actually seemed to be tying to kill him.

But he was too late. The moment was Sasuke's now. Everything in the fight had led up to this point where the battle would be decided, and Sasuke had been the one to come out on top. A second or two earlier, a touch faster, or perhaps in a slightly different location and Kimimaro might have won, but no this time at this speed in this place.

Sasuke jumped towards the tail, reducing the time he had before it would hit him. He braced himself, concentrating on keeping the chakra in his hand. The tail struck him, driving the air from his lungs and cracking his ribs. Sasuke was thrown through the air towards one of the nearby trees. He flipped in the air, pulling the last of the chakra that he needed into his hand. As his feet hit the trunk, the sound of birds' chirping filled the forest as blue lightning crackled around him.

In an instant, Sasuke was running down the tree. The pain in his side was immense, more than he'd thought it would be, but he ignored it for the moment. As soon as this was over, he knew that he'd be barely able to stand, but the adrenalin pumping through his system and his iron clad determination to finish Kimimaro off once and for all was enough to push it from his mind and keep his muscles from reacting to it.

He reached the forest floor and shot towards Kimimaro without breaking stride. When he was four meters away, a volley of bones was shot at him. He zigzagged through them as if they were standing still. At two meters away, the whip flashed forward, but Sasuke was around it in less than three steps. At one meter, Kimimaro's chest seemed to explode as bones rose up to greet Sasuke. They cut into his skin, dragging viciously along his arm as he reached forward, but he didn't stop.

It was too late to stop.

The Chidori hit bone, then flesh, then bone again, and finally it hit its target.

The monstrous Sound-nin roared in pain and twisted away as his tail lashed out again. Sasuke saw it coming but couldn't pull his hand from Kimimaro's chest in time and was too tired to really dodge anyway.

It struck him with far less force than it had the first time, but he was still sent flying. Sasuke landed in a heap, and tried to quickly get back to his feet but couldn't seem to get the world to stop spinning long enough for him to get his balance.

He coughed and regretted it as the pain in his ribs was nearly enough to knock him out. Blood exploded from his mouth as the coughing fit continued and then, as it eased, began to pool inside his cheeks. As he slowly recovered from the wave of pain he spit it out. He was bleeding internally, but he couldn't let that slow him down. He knew he had to get up, he had to get to Kabuto to make sure he was okay, he had to get to Sakura to save her from Sakon, he had to find Naruto and rescue him…

The ground vibrated against Sasuke's head as something large approached him. His eyes struggled to focus beyond the few blood-soaked blades of grass directly in front of him, but when they did, he found Kimimaro standing over him.

"I… I w-will fulfill… Or-Orochimaru-sama's… wishes," the Sound-nin whispered as a bone rose out of his hand. He lifted it, prepared to swing it down on Sasuke, and then something dark moved behind him so fast that it was little more than a blur in front of Sasuke's tired black eyes.

Kimimaro's face went slack and he toppled to the side.

Kabuto stepped forward and Sasuke's eyes slowly focused on him. The genin pushed his glasses father up his nose and smiled weakly. "Are you alright?"

Sasuke tried to nod. He might have even succeeded, he wasn't sure. "What happened?" he whispered.

"I told you, I'm not much of a fighter," Kabuto replied as he knelt down and slowly eased Sasuke onto his back. Kabuto's hands were covered in a green light as he began to run them over the worst of Sasuke's injuries. "I'm afraid I owe you an apology," he said. "I was… er, pretending to be dead, back there. I figured if that guy was only paying attention to you, I might be able to slip in and help you at the right moment. I've always been more of a sneaky type anyway. Direct confrontations are not my strong suit." He paused when he reached Sasuke's ribs and frowned. "This is a bad break, you're lucky it doesn't seem to have punctured your lungs."

Sasuke was past caring about the shape his body was in. He hurt all over, if Kabuto suddenly healed his ribs, he wasn't sure he'd even be able to tell the difference.

"How?"

Kabuto frowned and then looked over at Kimimaro's body as it shifted and transformed back into that of a regular man. "I have a surgeon's touch, you could say," he said with a small smile as he resumed his work on Sasuke. "There's a medical ninjutsu technique that creates a scalpel at the tips of your fingers. With a little effort, it can be a pretty long blade. I cut his spinal cord. He probably barely even felt it. With the damage you'd already done to him, I think he would have died anyway."

Sasuke took a shallow breath, wincing at the pain and then said, "I need you to help me up, I don't think I can get there on my own."

"I don't think that's a good idea, Sasuke-kun," Kabuto said. "Your injuries aren't life threatening, but you need to rest and heal. Your sensei should be along eventually and I'm sure that Hokage-sama will have sent a med team. When they get here, we'll move you."

"Sakura needs our help and Naruto…"

Kabuto was quiet for a moment and then he said, "Brace yourself, this is going to hurt."

It _did_ hurt, but when it was over, Sasuke was standing – somewhat unsteadily – and ready to go. He looked in the direction that Naruto had been taken and then back in the direction that he'd left Sakura. Another choice.

Which ever direction he chose, he couldn't send Kabuto the other way. He didn't have much strength left, if they ran into any enemies, he would be quickly overwhelmed without help and if either of his teammates was injured, he'd need a medic-nin to help them.

_'Forgive me,'_ he whispered as he turned towards Sakura and said, "Let's go."

ooo

After the first blow from the kunai, Sakura turned away. She heard Yoroi scream in pain for a few more seconds, but soon that feel silent and all she could hear was the sound of the blade slicing into the flesh of the man who had saved her.

Logic told her that Sakon only spent a few minutes – if even that – finishing Yoroi off, but to her it seemed to go on for hours.

Finally, even the sound of flesh being carved up disappeared. Sakura looked up and then quickly closed her eyes. It was not a pretty sight. Sakon rose, covered from head to toe in blood, and stumbled towards her, the blood drenched kunai clenched tightly in his hand.

"You just had to make this difficult, didn't you?" he growled. "Couldn't just die nice and peaceful, you had to make it a battle. You nearly killed my brother, and that. Really. Pisses. Me. Off."

Sakura tried to stand again, but her legs seemed even weaker now than they had been before. She leaned back until she fell and then rolled onto her stomach and began weakly trying to crawl away from the Sound-nin. She wasn't sure what she was doing or where she was going, but she knew that she needed to keep him from reaching her for as long as possible. If she could just stave off death for a little while, there was a chance that a plan or something would come to her.

"Where are you going?" Sakon sneered. "You think I'm going to let you go after what you did?"

Sakura's fingers dug into the dirt as she pulled herself along. If she could find a rock or something, perhaps she could hit him with it. He had to be almost as tired as she was, one solid blow might be enough to knock him out so she could recover and avenge Yoroi's death.

There were no rocks that she could find, or at least not any that were small enough for her to lift in her condition.

"What a pathetic worm you are," Sakon growled as he caught up with her. He stepped on her ankle, halting her escape. It wouldn't have taken him much effort to snap the bones in her leg from his position, but instead he just pressed down until she cried out and then walked farther up her body and began kicking her in the side.

Sakura instinctively curled into a ball, trying to protect herself from the onslaught.

Sakon knelt down, picked up a handful of dirt and shoved it into her face. "Here worm, have some dinner." Sakura tried to shake her head away, but he grabbed her hair and yanked hard, forcing her head back and her mouth open. Sakon pushed the dirt into her mouth and then forced it closed.

Sakura coughed and gagged, trying to spit it out so she could breathe. Sakon laughed at her efforts and rolled her onto her back, pinning her arms down as he straddled her chest and let his full weight rest on her.

"You know," he said with a wicked grin, "if you had a better body, I might actually have thought about having a little fun before I slit your throat from ear to ear. The thing is, I'm not into boys and with a body like yours I wouldn't be surprised to find a dick under that dress." He twirled the kunai between his fingers and leaned in closer, holding one hand up so it blocked the view of her body below the neck. "Well, you aren't so bad like this, I suppose. Some girls need to wear bags over their heads to look good you need to wear a bag over the rest of your body… and maybe a little one to cover that huge forehead of yours…

Sakura snarled in rage and a surge of strength flowed through her body as she threw her head forward, slamming her huge forehead into Sakon's face. The Sound-nin fell back, his weight momentarily lifting from Sakura's chest. Sakura wiggled out from under him and then used the last of her strength to push her body up enough so that she could throw herself at him. They wrestled in the dirt, as Sakura tried to get a hold of the kunai, but a small surge of strength and the element of surprise could only carry her so far. Sakon still outweighed her by a good ten kilograms and was much stronger than her.

He finally managed to get a good grip on her while she tried punching, kicking, and biting at him, and threw her off of him. Sakura rolled through the dirt and came to a stop, face down, panting and unable to rise.

Sakon slowly stood, sporting a few new scratches, but little else despite Sakura's best efforts. "Ukon's right," he grumbled as he walked towards her, "I do mess around too much. It's a lot of fun, but it's a bad habit." He knelt over her, pressing his knee into her back and then drove the kunai into her.

Sakura screamed into the dirt and weeds, trying instinctively to arch her back away from the pain, but unable to with Sakon's weight on her. He pulled the blade out and slammed it home again.

Once more he pulled it free and Sakura could feel her life draining away. Her extremities began to tingle numbly and her body suddenly felt lighter, as though no one was pushing down on her. Something gurgled near her ear. It was a strange sound, she couldn't quite place it. Was she hearing the blood bubbling out of her body? Had he stabbed her through the throat and she not realized it?

_'How weird that I didn't feel that, but I can still feel the rest of it,'_ she thought as her mind began to drift into peaceful detachment.

A new noise reached her ears, but it was very far away. Someone was yelling, but she couldn't figure out who it could be. She hoped Sakon didn't do anything icky to her body after she was dead. She supposed it wouldn't really matter to her, but she didn't want Sasuke or even Kakashi to have that be the last image of her that they ever saw.

It had always annoyed her, but perhaps it was a good thing that she didn't have feminine curves yet.

The yelling was growing louder and it was starting to almost sound like words. Sakura weakly turned her head to the side and found herself looking into a pair of dark eyes that were wide with surprise. The face surrounding the eyes was covered in blood and long gray hair hung down around it. It took her a long moment to realize that she was looking at Sakon and that he was quite dead.

As a couple of hands grabbed her and slowly eased her onto her side, careful to keep from touching her bleeding back, Sakura's brain grasped the fact that she hadn't been the one to kill Sakon… which seemed obvious once she got there.

"Sakura, can you hear me?" a voice that sounded suspiciously like Sasuke's asked worriedly.

Sakura looked up at the face that was above her and focused on it. It looked suspiciously like Sasuke's face. "Hi," she said with a weak smile.

"Just… hold on," Sasuke told her. "Kabuto's working on healing you."

"Oh… th-that's good." She was quiet for a moment and then a strange thought occurred to her. "W-where's Naruto?"

Even in the haze that seemed to be clouding her vision and keeping her brain from functioning properly, Sakura saw Sasuke flinch at the question and suddenly she knew what it meant: Naruto had been kidnapped and Sasuke hadn't saved him.

The fog around her brain began to lift as fear for her friend washed over her. "H-how am I?" she asked.

Sasuke looked up at someone outside her field of vision and then looked back down at her. "You're fine," he said so softly she could barely hear him. "Kabuto's going to have you on your feet in no time."

A new fear hit her. Sasuke was never gentle. "W-when we get back… to Konoha… will you take… take m-me on a date, a real one?"

He smiled again and nodded. "Sure. Wherever you want to go."

Sakura sighed, it was worse than she thought. "Sh-shit, I'm dying."

"You've lost a lot of blood," a new voice, she assumed it was Kabuto's, informed her. "There's a lot of internal bleeding and I don't have enough chakra to heal you fully."

"Stop trying," she whispered.

"What?!?"

"Don't… don't waste your energy. It-it w-won't change anything. Just… just lay me on my back… so I can see you two." Sasuke and Kabuto both started to protest, but Sakura weakly shook her head. "Please."

They did as she asked. It hurt like hell, but the pain was relatively short lived and so long as she didn't move much, she could hardly feel it at all. She looked up at Sasuke's blood caked face and smiled weakly. "You were… faster than I thought you would be," she whispered, "thanks. You should go… go after Naruto n-now."

"Don't talk like that," Sasuke said. "We're going to save him, together, just as soon as you're feeling better."

Sakura reached up and weakly cupped his cheek. "You're a bad liar."

"Sakura-chan," Kabuto said softly, "where's Yoroi-kun?"

Sakura swallowed hard. "Dead," she replied. "He saved me…"

Kabuto closed his eyes and cursed as he looked coldly at the body of Sakon, the kunai Sasuke had thrown still sticking out of the Sound-nin's throat. He stood up and looked around, quickly locating the body of his teammate and running towards him, leaving Sasuke and Sakura to share what moments they could draw out.

Sasuke looked down at Sakura and bit his lip as he wiped at his eyes. "I shouldn't have…" his voice trailed off as his head snapped to the side, his eyes wide. "Kakashi." He stood and waved his arms wildly, "Kakashi!"

Sakura sighed and let out a slow breath. Kakashi was okay, as she'd known that he would be. He and Sasuke would be able to save Naruto. She was so tired now. It was difficult to even keep her eyes open. It would be better just to close them and go to sleep. She felt them start to drift shut.

_'What the hell is that?!?'_ a voice demanded of her. Sakura blinked, but her eyes remained mostly open. _'Sasuke-kun said he'd go on a date with me! A _real _date! I can't die now!'_

It was tempting though. Really tempting. Just give in and let it all go.

_'Damn it, you are not allowed to die!' _the voice yelled once more. _'A few cuts and scrapes are nothing compared to the power of true love!'_

Sakura was sure that there were plenty of flaws in that argument, but the "true love" part _was_ pretty appealing, she had to admit. Her eyes remained open a little longer.

Then Kakashi was next to her along with two other people she didn't recognize and… a pig of all things.

One of the newcomers, the woman, took one look at Sakura and backed away. The other, a man with wild, white hair, grabbed her arm. "Tsunade, you can't back away from this. We don't have time."

'Tsunade' didn't reply.

"Help her!" Sasuke yelled.

Sakura's eyes drifted closed amidst yelling both inside her head and from the people gathered around her.

"She's dead anyway," a new voice, Tsunade's, said.

Sakura's eyes opened. "Not yet," she said with a small smile. Her eyes locked onto Tsunade's and held the older woman's gaze until Tsunade looked away. "It's okay," Sakura whispered. "Just go save Naruto."

"Tsunade!"

Tsunade walked slowly to Sakura seemingly in a trance and knelt next to her. Trembling fingers were brought together as they formed seals. Slowly she began to let her glowing green hands drift across Sakura's body. "It's a waste of effort," she whispered. "I can't save her."

"Then why a-are you trying?" Sakura asked.

Tsunade looked down at her in surprise, apparently shocked that she was actually still alive. "I don't know."

Sakura watched her for a few seconds and then asked, "Are you Tsunade of the Sannin?"

"I used to be. Shut up."

"I read… about you."

"That's great. Shut up."

"You were my hero w-when I was little."

"If you don't stop talking, you're going to die. Shut. Up."

Sakura closed her eyes once more. "I thought I was going to die anyway."

A sharp slap across the face brought her back to full wakefulness. "Don't go to sleep, just stop talking."

Sakura did her best to comply, though she was so tired it was hard to care. After a moment of not dying she asked, "Can you heal me enough to go after Naruto?"

Tsunade rolled her eyes. "What good could you possibly do?"

Sakura tried to shrug though she wasn't sure if she actually managed the movement. "What good could I possibly do lying here?"

"No."

"Will I live?"

"I'm starting to hope not."

Sakura smiled. Tsunade was a bad liar as well. Something in the older woman's movements began to change. Her hands still trembled, but their movements weren't as halting as they'd been before. Tsunade's left hand ran over Sakura's stomach as her right pointed at Jiraiya and snapped. "I need bandages, all of them."

The bandages were passed and Tsunade pressed the edge of one against Sakura's stomach and then smoothly rolled her over. Her green hand hesitating for just a second before it began gently probing the stab wounds on Sakura's back. Sakura could hear Tsunade breathing hard, but couldn't understand what the reason could possibly be.

"You," Tsunade called out, "you're a medic-nin, right?"

"Yes," Kabuto's voice was choked with emotion.

"Do you have a blood-stopping pill?"

"They won't work, her wounds are too—"

"I didn't ask if they'd work, I asked if you had one."

A few seconds later, something was pressed into Sakura's mouth. "Swallow this," Tsunade said gruffly.

There was a strange new confidence in her voice and Sakura didn't question her. The pill was bitter and made her feel strangely dehydrated.

After a few more minutes, Tsunade sighed and said, "She'll live for now, but she needs to get to a real hospital if she's going to survive the night. I can only do so much out here."

"Can you carry here back?" Jiraiya asked her.

"How sure are you that I won't drop her off on the doorstep and leave?"

Jiraiya chuckled. "You saved her life; you'll feel responsible for her until you're sure she's going to make it."

"What about Orochimaru?"

There was a long pause and then Jiraiya said, "If it comes to that, we'll deal with it as best we can."

"Don't die."

"Just put a wager on me not surviving and I'll be safe no matter what."

"I'm not joking."

Jiraiya gently lifted Sakura into his arms and passed her to Tsunade. "Naruto might need your help when we bring him back, we'll meet you at the hospital."

Tsunade took another pill from Kabuto and pushed it into Sakura's mouth. This one was sweet and within seconds of biting down on it she began to feel herself slipping into darkness once more.

"Tsunade-sama," she whispered in as much alarm as her tired body could muster.

"It's fine. Just something to keep you quite while I carry you back."

Sasuke's face appeared in her dimming vision. "I'll bring him back," he promised and then the world faded to black and Sakura knew no more.

ooo

Sasuke, Kabuto, Kakashi, and Jiraiya hurried along behind a small dog wearing a blue vest and a Leaf hitai-ate on his head. His fur was a light-brown, but his ears, nose, and mouth were darker brown. Kakashi had called the dog Pakkun. Sasuke called him annoying.

He just wasn't fast enough in Sasuke's mind, despite the fact that he was actually struggling a little to keep up with the group. Still, they were going as fast as they could and Pakkun claimed they were on Naruto and Tayuya's trail. They were still a ways back, but the scent was strong.

They reached the edge of the forest, coming to a large rocky canyon with two immense statues carved on either side. A large waterfall fell between the two statues; the roar of it filled their ears and would have drowned out most conversation if there was any going on.

Without hesitating, all five of them went over the edge, down to the rocky shore.

"Stop," Pakkun barked as they reached the edge of the water. He pressed his nose against the ground and walked in a slow, deliberate circle.

"What's wrong?" Sasuke demanded.

"The scent ends here."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" Sasuke gave his head an exaggerated turn in one direction and then the other before turning back to Pakkun and holding up his hands expectantly. "The scent can't _end_ here because Naruto's obviously not here!"

"Did they go into the water?" Kakashi asked.

"Some of them, yes, but not Naruto."

"How many are there?"

Pakkun's lips shifted in a way that made Sasuke think the dog was frowning. "Hard to say for sure. Twenty at least, maybe more. The scent is really confusing here, but they all spread out and go in different directions. I can smell a little of Naruto with each of them, but it doesn't seem strong enough to be his whole body."

Kakashi briefly pushed up his hitai-ate and looked around before pulling it back down. "No blood," he noted.

"Might be his clothes," Pakkun replied. "…or maybe shadow clones, those can have a scent to them as well if the user is good enough."

Sasuke did his best to ignore the implication, though his brain traitorously stored it away for later contemplation. "So where do we go now?"

Kakashi looked thoughtful and then said, "The one who was carrying Naruto, which way did she go?"

Pakkun made another small circle with his nose against the ground and then said, "Into the water."

Kakashi looked at the fast current and then up at the waterfall passing between the immense statues of Uchiha Madara and Senju Hashirama. A skilled ninja could use such a place to become completely lost. The falling water created a strong breeze that blew any airborne scent downwind and the water washed away all traces of the ground scent. Unless she was stupid enough to come out the other side in a straight line from where she entered, their chances of finding her were slim… and even then she might not have Naruto anymore.

"Do all of the new ones have Naruto's partial scent with them," he asked.

"No," Pakkun replied with a shake of his head, "only five of them. They either quartered his body or divided up his clothes."

"He's _not_ dead," Sasuke whispered.

Jiraiya joined Kakashi in looking up at the statues. "This won't work," he said softly. "Even if we all split up, we can't track every one of them."

"You think we should quit?!?" Sasuke demanded incredulously.

Jiraiya closed his eyes and nodded. "For the time being. If we split up, we run the risk of being ambushed and killed. Orochimaru might be out here personally overseeing Naruto's capture and none of you would last three seconds against him in your current states. Even if you were completely healthy, I wouldn't bet on you lasting more than a minute or two." His was quiet for a moment and then added, "We'll find Naruto, but we want to do it when we have a good chance of saving him without getting every one of us killed and leaving him just as captured as he was before."

Sasuke looked at the adults and saw that they all agreed. He slowly let his gaze drop down to Pakkun.

Without any warning he grabbed Pakkun by the collar and ran out over the water to the other side of the river. "Find him!" he growled as he dropped Pakkun on the shore. He'd wanted to throw the damn dog at the ground, but a more rational part of him realized that no good would come from giving into his frustrations like that.

Pakkun glared up at him and then began to walk towards the base of the waterfall. Once he was there, he turned around and walked back downstream, passing Sasuke and continuing on for well over a hundred meters before he stopped and walked back to Sasuke. "Should I just keep walking downstream forever?"

Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "If that's what it takes."

Pakkun looked up at Kakashi, who was just stepping onto the shore, and said, "You should teach your student to be nicer to cute little doggies, Kakashi."

Kakashi ignored the comment. "Do you smell anything that could be Naruto? Maybe she handed him off midstream."

"All I smell is water, dirt, and…" he paused, "…deer, I think. The scent is real faint, probably washed out by the wind and the moisture."

Jiraiya and Kabuto joined them on that side of the river as well. "There are any number of directions they could have taken him," Jiraiya pointed out, "and dozens of ways to avoid being detected if they were smart enough to think we'd use dogs to track them. We've reached a dead end."

Sasuke looked up at Kakashi and said, "It can't end here, not like this."

Kakashi closed his one visible eye and shook his head. "It won't, but we need to regroup. We can't just keep going like this without any clue as to where they are going."

Sasuke's fist clenched so tightly that blood began to seep between his fingers. With a growl of frustration he dropped to his knees and slammed his fist into the cracked dirt that lined the river.

_'I should have taken their offer,'_ he whispered to himself. _'I should have gone with them when they first offered. They would have left Sakura, Kabuto, and Yoroi alone and they would have taken me straight to Naruto… and to Orochimaru.'_ He hadn't missed the way Tsunade and Jiraiya spoke about Orochimaru. There was a hint of fear – or at least unease – in their voices whenever they said his name.

If he was powerful enough to make the other two members of the Sannin uncomfortable…

"Come on, Sasuke," Kakashi said gently as he gripped his student's shoulder and steered him back towards Konoha. "Let's go see how Sakura is doing and figure out what where we should go from here."

Sasuke allowed them to lead him back towards the village, but he didn't say anything the whole way back. He was questioned about his portion of the mission, but he didn't hear and didn't answer.

ooo

The wind died down and the fan carrying Temari, Kankuro, and Gaara drifted to the ground in a small clearing in the midst of a large forest. The landing wasn't one of Temari's better ones and all three went tumbling through the grass as the nose of the fan dug into the dirt and threw them off. Temari was used to carrying herself on the fan, and had occasionally practiced taking another with her, but never three.

Kankuro grunted as he slowly rose to his feet and glared at his sister who was on her hands and knees panting hard. He understood that she couldn't have done any better – if he hadn't, he would have laughed or yelled at her – Temari had gone through two long fights in the Chuunin Exam, another smaller fight during the ambush, had used the summoning jutsu twice, and had just carried herself and two other people as far as she could using nothing more than a fan and her ability to manipulate wind… but he still felt annoyed with her.

For some reason, he'd followed her as she led him down a path that would take everything from him. They were missing-nin now. They'd be hunted like animals for the rest of what was sure to be their very short lives.

Plus, he'd lost Karasu when they took off on the fan.

He stared at her for a moment longer and then turned and walked towards Gaara who was laying face down in the grass a short distance away. Kankuro pushed his toe under his brother and nudged him onto his back, his muscles tensed to get him out of there at the first sign of swirling sand.

Gaara's face was ashen and his eyes closed. Kankuro waited for a few seconds and then knelt next to Gaara and checked his pulse. It was faint, but there.

"Is he…?" Temari whispered as she struggled to catch her breath.

"He's alive," Kankuro replied in a voice that made it clear he wasn't sure if he was conveying good news or bad.

"We need to bandage his wound," Temari said, pushing herself to her feet.

Kankuro rolled his eyes. "_Brilliant_ idea, why didn't I think of that?"

He pulled his headwear off his head and began cutting it into strips of cloth, the arms of his shirt soon followed. He hated losing parts of his outfit, but he couldn't continue wearing it anyway. An all black outfit with purple kabuki face paint was the sort of thing that would stand out… and get him killed.

Had this happened to them in a few years, when they were much stronger, it might not have been such a big deal. There were several missing-nin who had very distinctive traits that they didn't bother to hide because they were actually strong enough to deal with the consequences, but Kankuro – confident as he was about his abilities – knew that he wasn't that strong yet.

Not that it really mattered, Kankuro thought as he began cleaning the wound as best he could and then binding it tightly. Chances were, Gaara was going to kill them in their sleep at some point anyway.

He tightened the last of the strips of cloth and ran his hand through his red hair, shaking his head at the insanity of the whole situation.

"I never should have let you talk me into this," he grumbled.

"I didn't _talk_ you into anything," she pointed out.

Kankuro grunted in annoyance and looked down at Gaara's shoulder, his critical eye noting that his lack of skill in wound dressing was pretty obvious. "Why…"

His voice trailed off, but his question didn't need to be completed to be understood: Why risk our necks for _him_?

Temari was quiet for a long time and then shrugged. "I don't know."

Kankuro rolled his eyes again. "Well, as long as you had a good reason."

"Things were happening too fast!" Temari snapped. "I didn't have time to think about it, I just…" she bit her lip and looked down at Gaara. "…I don't know. Sorry."

Kankuro's eyes widened in surprise. Temari never said she was sorry unless Gaara was threatening to kill her, looking like he might kill her, or looking like he was about to start thinking he would like to kill her… so basically anytime Gaara looked annoyed. Certainly she'd never said sorry to _him_.

"He didn't do it," Kankuro said after a moment. "He wasn't part of whatever that was back there."

"That's obvious."

"So why did Yuura try to pin it on him? It wasn't like father would be any more lenient on him because he was only working for Gaara. If anything, he'd probably be tortured for information."

"The real question is: why did father believe him so quickly?" Temari pointed out. "Desperate men will say anything, he wasn't a very trustworthy source of information in a situation like that, and Gaara had been fighting those Rock-nin… it doesn't make any sense."

Kankuro shook his head. "Nothing that's happened today has made much sense."

Temari nodded in agreement and folded her arms across her chest as she closed her eyes. Beneath her eyelids, Kankuro could see her eyes moving back and forth as she processed information in her 'thinking pose.' He waited impatiently for her to finish.

Finally, she opened her eyes and said, "I've got nothing. There doesn't seem to be any connection between everything that happened except Uzumaki Naruto. Gaara was obsessed with him, he beat both of us, ever since Gaara fought him he's been acting weird, and then father mentioned him right before the attack… though that was probably more of a coincidence than anything."

"So what do we do now? Go find him or something?"

Temari shook her head. "No. We have to stay away from ninja villages for a while, definitely until Gaara is healed, but even after that we should probably stick with small towns where no one will have heard of us. We're not only missing-nin, but we're the Kazekage's children, a lot of people will be looking for us. And you can bet that father will be offering a large reward for our heads."

Kankuro frowned and looked around at the tall trees of the forest. He wished they were in the desert; at least that setting was a little more familiar and reassuring. Unfortunately, he probably wouldn't be able to go back to a desert for a long time.

He turned back to Temari and found her untying the four ponytails that had been her preferred hairstyle for as long as he could remember. She finished with the last one and shook her head, working her fingers through her hair. Kankuro tried not to laugh, but a snort still escaped. Her hair was sticking out all over the place, making it look like she had a tumbleweed attached to the back of her head.

She looked up at him sharply, her eyes narrowed. "You won't be laughing when I finish giving you a haircut."

"No one ever sees my hair," he shot back quickly. "We don't have to cut it. I'll get rid of the face paint and practically be a whole new person." He looked down at Gaara and said, "Gaara's, on the other hand, will probably be more obvious. Why don't you cut _his_ hair?"

Temari looked down at Gaara and unconsciously shuddered slightly probably thinking about what her brother would do to her if he woke in the middle of a haircut. Kankuro snorted and shook his head. They'd risked their lives and threw away their futures to save Gaara and they both knew that he might get irritated and kill them on a whim when he woke up. What, exactly, _had_ they been thinking when they intentionally got themselves into this mess?

Before Kankuro could begin considering that thought again, Gaara groaned softly as his green eyes slowly opened. Kankuro and Temari both backed away from their brother, not sure what sort of mood he'd be in when he was fully conscious once more.

"That was fast," Kankuro whispered to Temari. "He lost a lot of blood, he shouldn't be awake yet. Do you think Shukaku healed him?"

"How should I know?" she hissed back. "He's never been hurt before!"

Gaara's hand weakly drifted up to his shoulder and touched the bandages there. He grimaced and his eyes narrowed as what looked like a thoughtful frown spread across his face. Slowly, he turned his head towards Temari and Kankuro and then stared at them in silence.

Kankuro looked at Temari who seemed just as confused and unnerved by the whole thing as he was. "What do we do now?"

Temari debated it for a moment and then stepped hesitantly forward. "How do you feel, Gaara?"

Gaara stared for a moment longer and then said, "I hurt."

"Do you think you could stand?"

He considered her question and then, instead of answering, asked, "Where are we?"

"I don't know," Temari replied. "We got you as far from the battle as we could, but I'm not even sure I know which direction we were traveling in."

Gaara lifted his head as if he were trying to sit up, but hissed in pain and allowed himself to settle back down on the ground. "Why are you here?"

"Wouldn't we all like to know?" Kankuro muttered before he could stop himself. The second he realized what he'd said, his eyes widened and he instinctively started to apologize to Gaara. Even injured as he was, Gaara could probably kill him. If he couldn't yet, he might do so later when he was more recovered. Either way, it was better not to have Gaara angry with him. Kankuro hated groveling like this, especially to someone younger than him.

Despite the fact that Gaara was basically a little kid in appearance, he was more like a force of nature. The desert quickly taught its inhabitants to give it the respect it was owed. Those who didn't respect the nature of the desert were quickly killed so their stupidity could not be passed on to future generations. Gaara was like the great gusts of wind that sometimes appeared almost without warning, picking up sand and throwing it as far and fast as possible. If you knew to get down and out of the way, it was inconvenient and unpleasant, but not deadly; if you were too dumb to get out of its way, the sand would suffocate you, remove the flesh from your bones, or both.

Kankuro was no idiot. He knew when to get down… but that didn't mean he liked it.

"Don't!" Gaara's yelled. His voice sounding almost terrified.

Kankuro couldn't remember ever even hearing Gaara sound nervous, let alone scared. He looked at his brother in confusion. Gaara _had_ been acting weird since he fought Uzumaki Naruto, but this seemed to be beyond weird.

"Don't look at me like that," Gaara said, a little calmer this time. He was quiet for a second and then added something else that Kankuro couldn't remember ever hearing from his brother, "Please."

Temari moved over to Gaara and helped his get into a sitting position, careful not to put any pressure on his injury. "We need to get you somewhere safe. We'll talk about… _this_… later. Kankuro did as well as he could with your wound, but the bandages will need to be changed soon and you need someone who actually knows what he's doing. Once you're healed a little more, we'll figure out what to do from there."

Kankuro was glad for the distraction from Gaara's weirdness. He was used to a Gaara that would kill people that irritated him or just because he wanted to satisfy his bloodlust. He was used to a Gaara who was a ruthlessly efficient ninja. He was used to a Gaara who couldn't be touched by any weapon or jutsu known to man.

This new Gaara, who had been hurt, who got scared, who kept acting in a very un-Gaara like way, was strange and unnerving. The desert didn't usually offer new experiences for someone who'd been living there his whole life. On the rare occasion when something new was found, you always had to proceed with caution.

In Kankuro's mind, Gaara was no different.

The three missing-nin gathered up what little they had and then Temari and Kankuro helped Gaara as they headed off through the forest in search of a place where they could get Gaara treated.

A few hours later, they came across a small rocky cave in the side of a hill. There was a stream not far from there and Temari managed to find some plants that could be ground into a healing salve. The cave was only supposed to be a temporary resting spot, a place to sleep for the night and then move on, but it would end up being their home for over a week as Temari and Kankuro searched the surrounding area for any towns or villages while Gaara grew steadily stronger.

By the time they found a village, over half a day's travel from the cave, Gaara was healthy enough that it no longer mattered. The village was a good source of information, however, and from what they learned there, they began to form plans for how they would survive in the new world they found themselves in.

ooo

Shizune was the first person of interest that six members of the group, who'd been dubbed the 'rookie nine' by those paying attention to the Chuunin Exam test scores, saw come through the gate after their vigilance began. They wouldn't actually have recognized her as someone of interest were she not accompanied by an enormous toad that barely fit between the gates once they were open. That she was with a huge toad was weird, but that it was the fact that they'd all seen the toad, or one like it, during Naruto's match with Gaara that really caught their attention.

Unfortunately, Shizune was obviously in a hurry and none of them knew her, so they refrained from seeing if she knew anything about Naruto.

Her appearance marked a noticeable change in the way people around the gate were acting. Previously, they'd been on high alert, but the gates were still manned mostly by chuunin with the occasional jounin. Now ANBU members could be seen with some regularity as they patrolled the area. The fact that an ANBU was even visible meant that still more had to be hidden nearby.

Less than fifteen minutes after Shizune had stepped through the gate, a woman with long blond hair pulled back into two ponytails and a strange purple diamond on her forehead pushed her way through the gates, ignoring the shouts of protest by those who wanted her to check in with more than, "I'm Tsunade, get out of my way."

Ino's eyes widened as she caught sight of what Tsunade had draped over her shoulders. "Sakura!"

Tsunade didn't slow down as she began making her way towards the hospital.

"What happened to her?" Ino yelled, struggling to keep up.

Tsunade didn't reply or slow down.

"Is she…"  
"She's alive," Tsunade said at last.

Ino accepted that as all she was like likely to get and followed Tsunade in silence.

Hinata and the rest of the group remained near the gates. There were hushed conversations about what it could mean for the fate of Team Seven, but Hinata didn't join in the worried speculation. She'd gotten a good look at Sakura's face, she wasn't sure she wanted to think what it meant for the others who hadn't come back yet. Sakura looked like she'd been beaten to within an inch of her life, and maybe closer than that.

Would Naruto return in a similar condition? She prayed for his safety to her ancestors and whatever other deity would listen.

Less than an hour later, Sasuke, Kakashi, Kabuto, and Jiraiya walked dejectedly through the gates. None of them looked up to those who asked them what had happened. Kakashi stepped aside and gave some instructions to one of the cloaked members of ANBU and then continued on in the direction of the hospital.

As he passed near Hinata, she whispered, "Naruto-kun…?"

Kakashi paused mid-step and shook his head. "We couldn't find him."

He might have said more, Hinata wasn't sure, she didn't remember him saying anymore, but she barely was aware of her teammates offering consolatory words or Akamaru nuzzling against her leg as he whined softly. After nearly a minute of sitting in a stunned stupor, Hinata turned to her teammates and whispered, "W-we should go… go find Kurenai-sensei. We might have a mission."

Kiba said something to her, but she didn't hear him as she walked in the direction that she hoped Kurenai would be, though she really had no idea why she would be at the hospital.

It just seemed like the next place to be for some reason.

ooo

Kakashi, Jiraiya, Sasuke, and Kabuto didn't actually go to the hospital. While Kakashi and Sasuke certainly needed to go there eventually, they weren't actually in any danger and neither felt like having their wounds treated at the moment anyway. Instead they made their way to the Hokage Tower and slowly ascended the stairs to the council chambers.

Shortly after an aide informed the village council that they had returned, they were ushered into the room and asked to give an account of what had happened.

Kakashi did most of the talking. When he was done, Kabuto was asked to explain his actions. He spoke in a soft monotone, glossing over details and occasionally repeating himself. By the time he got to the point where he learned of Yoroi and Misumi's deaths, tears were running under his classes and down his dirty cheeks, though his voice carried none of those emotions.

"It was a very stupid thing that you did," Mitokado Homura, one of the Third's old teammates and closest advisors informed Kabuto. "What were you thinking?"

"A… friend of mine was in trouble, I thought we could help. Had I known what the price would be…" His voice trailed off.

"Kabuto has more than paid for his mistake," the Third said with a small cough. "And if he hadn't rushed off to help Team Seven, Sakura, Sasuke and perhaps even Kakashi might all have been killed and Naruto would still have been abducted."

"Are we sure that he _was_ abducted?" a man with a large bandage covering half of his face asked. "For all we know, this was a defection."

"Uzumaki Naruto would not have defected," the Third said resolutely, coughing again. "All evidence points towards an abduction and that…" he cleared his throat, frowning, "…is how we will treat this, Danzo."

"Danzo makes a valid point," Homura said quickly. "There's no evidence that Naruto defected, but we can't discount the possibility."

Sarutobi sipped some water that an aide brought him and then covered his mouth as small coughing fit hit his body again. When it had passed he said, "The possibility will not be discounted, but in the end it doesn't matter. We will need to retrieve Naruto as soon as we are able. Surely all here can see the wisdom in this?"

There were murmurs and reluctant nods around the table, but no one challenged the Third's statement. Sarutobi coughed again, a drier cough this time.

"Are you alright, Hokage-sama?" Danzo asked. "You don't seem well."

Sarutobi let out a slow breath. "I'm fine. Thank you for asking. Just a small tickle in my throat." He turned to the ninja in front of him and asked, "Is there anything else you wish to add?"

Kabuto shot a glance at Sasuke, waited for a second, and then said, "Along the lines you were discussing, the ninja that Sasuke-kun and I fought, Kimimaro, did say something strange. He claimed that Naruto-kun had been growing stronger because of Orochimaru and that Naruto was—"

Sasuke grabbed him roughly be the shoulder and spun him around. "Shut up about that! There's no reason to repeat those lies!"

Kabuto shook his head sadly. "Forgive me Sasuke-kun, but I've already made the mistake of not sharing information with my superiors… I couldn't bear to face those consequences again. They need to know if they are going to make an informed decision."

Sarutobi coughed and then asked, "What are you talking about?"

Kabuto waited for Sasuke to release him, his eyes remaining on Sasuke's. Finally Sasuke sighed, let go, and nodded hesitantly. Kabuto explained about the offer Kimimaro made to Sasuke to take him to Orochimaru and the claim that Naruto had accepted a similar offer. He was careful to point out that there was a good chance that Kimimaro was lying, but held nothing back.

When he was done, the murmuring around the table was louder than before.

Sarutobi slumped slightly in his chair and drank deeply from his glass of water. He rubbed at his eye and then leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands. "Thank you for your report. Please, go to the hospital and have your injuries dealt with. This will be a matter that will take some time to work out as we plan our next move."  
Kakashi, Sasuke, and Kabuto began to leave, but Jiraiya remained where he was. "I'd like a decision now," he told the council. "What resources are you going to devote to rescuing Uzumaki Naruto?"

The room fell quiet except for a lone contemptuous snort that seemed to echo in the momentary silence.

Sarutobi's eyes drifted towards the council members and waited patiently for one of them to speak up. Finally Utatane Koharu, the other of the Third's old teammates, said, "That is not a decision that can be made quickly. We will have to give it careful thought in light of recent information as well as the current events we find ourselves in. Naruto is important, both in what he is and in the fact that he is a member of this village, but we have to look at the bigger picture. Resources must be properly allocated given the known risks versus the potential rewards."

"When you say resources, are you referring to me?" Jiraiya asked.

"I am referring to _all_ of Konoha's resources."

"Then you _aren't_ referring to me," Jiraiya told her. "I'll help you with a mission to save Naruto, but that's all. Neither Tsunade nor I have any intention of joining your war effort."

"You would turn your back on us in our time of need?" one of the council members demanded, rising from his seat.

Jiraiya regarded the man calmly and then turned his eyes towards the Third Hokage. "What you need and what you _think_ you need are two different things. Naruto is more important to me and to this village than you realize. The sooner I bring him back, the better off Konoha will be."

Sarutobi coughed into his hand and then smiled at his former pupil. "You are dismissed Jiraiya."

Jiraiya nodded and followed Sasuke, Kabuto, and Kakashi out the door.

ooo

Sakura opened her eyes to find Sasuke sitting in a chair next to her. His face, arms, and chest were wrapped in bandages and his eyes were closed in sleep. From the looks of him, she doubted that he was supposed to be out of bed, let alone visiting her.

The thought was pleasing and brought a smile to her face despite the aching pain that was pushing its way through whatever painkillers were in her system.

Sasuke's eyes slowly opened, his long eyelashes fluttering like the wings of a butterfly. He looked at Sakura and something close to a smile appeared on his face.

Sakura smiled back. "Are you supposed to be in here?"

Sasuke shrugged. "No one stopped me from coming in."

"Did they _see_ you come in?"

"No."

She wanted to laugh, but her body wouldn't cooperate. With all that had happened… she wasn't sure that she would be laughing any time soon. "Are you okay?" she asked softly.

Sasuke shook his head. "No."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

She wasn't sure what other reasons he could possibly have had for coming into her room and told him so.

"I just wanted to tell you that I'm going to bring him back. Everything I do from now on will be for that."

Sakura frowned. "What about your brother?"

Sasuke flinched, inhaling sharply through his nose. For a long moment he didn't say anything. Then finally he rose to his feet and looked out the window. "Naruto first."

Sakura smiled again. "Okay, when I'm back on my feet, we'll start training. Next time, nothing will stop us."

Sasuke shook his head. "Don't use those words."

"What words?"

"'Us,' 'we,' there is no us or we. There's just me and the mission."

"Are you saying that I'm not invited when you go try to save Naruto?" Sakura asked. "Because if you are, I'm pretty sure you can go to hell for all I care."

Sasuke sighed. "I'm saying that… I can't give you what you want from me."

"What I want from you?"

Sasuke nodded. "That's not me. What happened before…" his cheeks colored, "it didn't mean anything. Don't get your hopes up."

"Sasuke-kun, I don't want anything from you," Sakura said softly.

Sasuke shook his head again. "Everyone wants something from me, but you want everything… and I can't give it to you… I won't. We're friends, that's it. Don't turn into someone like Rin who pins all of her hopes on someone who can't return those feelings."

"I won't be like _her_," Sakura spat. "And I don't care about that other stuff."

"Yes you do. You care more than anyone and… just let it go."

Sakura lowered her eyes, willing the tears to stay down. "Of course," she whispered, "but I'm still going to help you save Naruto."

Sasuke gave her a sharp look, a strange light shining in them, and then turned and walked out the door without saying another word. Sakura wasn't sure what to make of it, but once she was sure he was gone, she let the tears come.

Her crying was silent and over quickly. She was too tired for a full on pity party and it wasn't long before her mother and Ino showed up to "help" speed her recovery. If they noticed Sakura's melancholy mood, they didn't say anything about it.

It was a full week before Sakura was released from the hospital, and then another two before she could participate in full active duty. By that time, she'd gotten over Sasuke's words enough that she was as normal as could be expected around them. It was a while before they began training together again, but even that slowly resumed.

They made plans for how they would help Naruto. Different contingencies were mapped out. Sakura spent what little free time she had in the library, poring over scrolls about jinchuriki, Orochimaru, the Rice Country, and anything else she thought might be important. The stuff she found on Orochimaru chilled her to the bone and seemed to suck the hope right out of her.

Soon, she was almost glad to be fighting in the war because it kept her out of the library and away from thoughts of what Naruto might be going through.

ooo

Naruto flinched a second before his blue eyes snapped open and then instantly shut again as an immense headache erupted the moment he returned to full consciousness. He groaned pitifully and tried to sit up but found that his body wouldn't respond to the commands his brain was sending. He could open his eyes and, with considerable effort, move them slightly from side to side, but more than that was beyond him. As near as he could tell, he was lying on a table, or extremely hard bed, in the middle of a semi-darkened room. The walls of the room were beyond his line of vision, but the ceiling was grey, cracked, and had water dripping from it in one spot. Wherever he was, it wasn't Konohagakure's hospital.

"Ku ku ku," a voice chuckled from somewhere, the sound echoing off the walls of the room and shaking Naruto to the core.

It couldn't be.

It was impossible.

"Hello, Naruto-kun, long time no see," Orochimaru whispered in Naruto's ear as he stepped closer, one hand reaching around to the other side of the blond's head and gently caressing his cheek like an affectionate parent. "How have you been?"

Naruto swallowed and tried to reply, but his throat wouldn't work, ether for the same reason he was unable to move or from the terror that was coursing through his veins.

"Don't worry, you don't have to say anything, yet," Orochimaru chuckled as he rose and sat down next to Naruto on the table. He smiled down at Naruto as his long tongue wet his lips. "You and I are going to have plenty of time to have some long, detailed discussions once you're feeling a little more up to it."

Naruto wracked his brain, trying to think of what could have led him here, what could have messed things up to the point that he was taken instead of Sasuke, but he could think of nothing. Sasuke was still the one with the Sharingan, still the one with all the talent, still the one that everyone knew would be great. Naruto was nothing, or at least not the sort of person that Orochimaru should be interested in. Becoming a chuunin couldn't have changed things like this, could it? Helping Hinata? Trying to teach Sasuke? Letting Jiraiya in on his secret? No, he didn't think any of those could have had this effect and this was far too strange a change to be some random divergence from the timeline he remembered.

Whatever it was, it had changed huge things. It altered Orochimaru attending the Chuunin Exam, it prevented the war, it…

"Have you figured it out yet?" Orochimaru asked softly, cocking his head to the side as he stared down into Naruto's eyes. Naruto had the distinct impression that Orochimaru had either guessed exactly what he was thinking or else read him mind, neither possibility was enjoyable to entertain.

Naruto swallowed again, but he still couldn't seem to get his mouth to open and respond.

"As slow as ever I see," Orochimaru said with a smile, "hard to believe that someone like you was such a large thorn in my side for so long. I suppose you and Jiraiya are alike in that regard." His eyes grew cold and he brought his face closer to Naruto's. "Do you want to know what we are going to be talking about just as soon as you rediscover your voice?" he asked his smile twisting into a menacing scowl. "We are going to have a nice long talk about just how the hell you and I ended up all the way back here. All of our accomplishments, all of our successes, everything that we… that _I_ worked so hard for, gone in an instant. One moment, I'm standing over your pathetic broken body, enjoying my final victory over you and Konoha… and the next I'm waking up in a body with no Sharingan, being asked about my plans to set my operatives in position to attack Konohagakure during the Chuunin exam!"

He stood and began pacing. "I thought you might have trapped me in some sort of genjutsu, impossible as it seemed, then I wondered if perhaps I had lost my mind, and then I realized what had really happened: that _you_ had somehow done it to me… on accident, no doubt. You discovered a way to travel back in time, to give yourself a second chance at life, to take away everything I had worked so hard for, but then you brought me along for the ride by mistake." He looked up at the ceiling and his face relaxed as a smile once again formed on his lips. "I must commend you, it's a brilliant jutsu. I think it might possibly be even greater than my own attempts at immortality so long as you don't mind the redundancy of it all. And, you see, I don't mind the redundancy of it all. In fact, I think that the redundancy will be part of the fun. So you are going to tell me _exactly_ how you did it."

"G-go t-ta h-hell," Naruto croaked, finally forcing his mouth and throat to obey.

"Hmm, looks like we'll be having this conversation sooner than I thought," Orochimaru chuckled, kneeling so that his face was next to Naruto's ear once more. "Before we start, though, I want to make something clear. You. Are. Mine! No one knows where you are. No one is coming for you. No one cares about you. If any of your so-called friends manage to find this place, I'll kill them. And if you don't tell me what I want to know, I will make life, very, very unpleasant for you until you finally break. Understand?"

Naruto tried to slam his head into Orochimaru's, but all the movement he could muster was so slight and so slow that he managed nothing more than to alert Orochimaru to what he was trying.

"Ah, I thought that would be your reply," the leader of the Sound said with a chuckle as he rose to his full height. "Well before I leave to your recovery, I'll give you one last piece of news. Kyuubi won't help you with this one, it will be just you and me and every ninja under my command."

He held up a hand and his fingers began to glow as chakra became visible around their tips, then he slammed it into Naruto's stomach. Naruto's eyes bulged and his body tried to vomit but couldn't find the energy to complete the reaction. Darkness began to swallow him once more, but before his mind completely succumbed to unconsciousness, Orochimaru's voice was in his ear.

"No help, no escape… no hope. You are mine until I decide to kill you… it will be up to you how slow and painful a death you get when the time comes. One way or another, you _will_ give me what I want…"

Naruto didn't have to pretend to be afraid to mask his thoughts, he _was_ afraid, but he was also thinking. Orochimaru didn't know. He thought that them going back in time was all something Naruto had done, rather than being some big cosmic accident… if it _was _an accident. Naruto didn't have any idea how they'd traveled back in time, he hadn't even really thought about it much after the first couple of days because he honestly didn't care. It was a blessing to him, being sent back and given a second chance, but to Orochimaru, who had been on the brink of total victory, it must have been horrifying. All that work, all that effort, all those successes, gone in the blink of an eye.

Somehow, instead of realizing that it wasn't part of some grand scheme, Orochimaru had come to the conclusion that it was a jutsu Naruto had invented. Were he not in such a horrible situation, Naruto might have laughed at the absurdity of the idea. A _time travel_ jutsu? It was almost absurd, or at least he thought so. Maybe someone with more brains than him could figure out a way to do such a thing, but he doubted it.

The important part was that Orochimaru really believed that Naruto had pulled something like that off. And so, instead of worrying about Sasuke, he'd concentrated his efforts on finding and capturing Naruto. It meant that for the time being, Sasuke was safe.

It meant that Naruto had to keep that information from Orochimaru for as long as he could bear it, even if it killed him.

And it probably would.

"I… won't te-tell you," Naruto whispered. "I… don't c-care what… you do to me."

Orochimaru smiled down at him and made a signal with his hand. "I promise you, Naruto-kun, in a couple of seconds, you _will_ start caring very much and no matter how much you scream, _I _won't care… not until you tell me what I want to know."

A few seconds later, the whole of Orochimaru's lair seemed to echo with Naruto's screams of pain. True to his word, Orochimaru didn't care. He laughed through the whole thing.

ooo

"So, war has come again."

"Eh, who cares? There's always some war going on, even if it isn't 'official,' should only make our job easier anyway hmm."

"The nations will use their jinchuriki if things escalate. It _will_ be easier to find them."

"But harder to get them because security will be tighter."

"Security doesn't work on the battlefield. **We just find them in the heat of battle, wait until the smoke clears, and then we'll take them**."

"There are reports that the one-tail has gone rogue. It could complicate things."

"Someone like him won't be hard to find. He's too unstable. He'll leave a pretty clear trail of bodies hmm."

"And what of the Kyuubi?"

"As near as we can tell, Orochimaru has him."

"That is… troubling. Orochimaru knows something of our plans."

"Orochimaru is nothing. We were going to deal with him eventually anyway. This just means that we'll get more out of it when we do."

"Our time is still a little ways off. You all know what you need to be doing. Make sure that you are prepared when the preparations are complete."

o

o

A/N: Well, Naruto woke up, just as I said he would… though I image that wasn't a very satisfying way for it to happen for most of you, eh? So, was anyone actually surprised by the "twist" there? It seems like I got asked about a dozen times every chapter if Orochimaru had come back with Naruto or not. I think the first ones to really call it were SpartanZero and Veil of Dreams way back in chapter 25. They even went so far as to point out the whole vortex thing swallowing Orochimaru up in the prologue. Well, maybe it surprised someone…

The bold text there in the Akatsuki section is meant to show the split dialogue of Zetsu. That's probably how I'll do it in the future since I don't think the site will let me have a different font for one portion of his dialog. Also, Deidara's little personal quirk about how he ends his sentences will be "hmm" instead of "yeah." The reason for this is some Japanese thing that I don't fully understand, but the good people at Shannaro make a decent case for this change at the end of chapter 263 and, frankly, the "yeah" always bugged me a bit.

Okay, next chapter… won't have any Naruto in it, I fear. I think were going to do a little excursus in the next chapter maybe two chapters depending on how long it takes. We'll call it the "Orochimaru Gaiden" for lack of a more original title. After that I think there will be a chapter that will basically just have some tales from the war and then… well, I'm not totally sure. Perhaps the story will just be called complete… so I can immediately move onto the "sequel" or Part II of the story in a new, uh, story… though I'm not sure if I want to do that. This _is_ a really long story already and I don't know if I want to see how high the words counter can go.

Well, let me know what you think. I'm especially interested in hearing if there were any people actually surprised at this point. Such a pity, Orochimaru being from the future and capturing Naruto seemed like a great twist, but it took too long to get there I fear. Ah well.


	43. Orochimaru Gaiden

A/N: Sorry about the long wait on this one. I severely underestimated the post-finals hangover that I received after this long – and somewhat brutal – semester. I've barely even touched the keyboard in the last few weeks since posting chapter 42. I did, however, use the mouse to check my email and greatly enjoyed everyone's reactions to the "big twist" that wasn't as big for some as it was for others. Sorry about not replying to hardly anyone… the idea of thinking enough to respond to comments just hasn't been appealing these last few weeks.

Anyway, this chapter is more of a side story than anything else. There's some good info, but nothing earth shattering since you know that Orochimaru is from the future as well and has – obviously – been doing as much mucking around with the timeline as Naruto has. If you're interested, enjoy, but if not, then don't worry about it you won't be lost if you skip it.

For those who were worried, I'm obviously not abandoning this story (sorry if the Author's note in the last chapter was confusing in that regard). What I will be doing is making a sequel/continuation in a new story (on this site) tentatively called "Here and Now." If you have an account, just put me on Author Alert and you'll get the update. If you don't have an account, just check under my pen name after the first week in January and it should be there. This means, for those paying attention, that the next update won't be until after the new year. I'm going to Florida (which sounds better and better every time it snows here in Iowa) for Christmas and won't have a chance/the desire to work on the story until I get back.

So, with that I say: Merry Christmas, Joyous Kwanzaa, Happy Hanukkah, or, if you celebrate something else (or nothing at all), have a blessed few weeks and enjoy the chapter.

o

Orochimaru Gaiden

o

Orochimaru's body was alert several seconds before his yellow eyes snapped open. His head throbbed painfully, but he ignored the pain and his own desire to close his eyes against it. With a soft, almost silent, groan he sat up and looked around.

Something was wrong with the room, but he couldn't quite figure out what. The headache wasn't helping him figure it out either.

His pale lips pressed into a thin frown as he let his eyes travel from one side of the room to the other and then back again. Whatever was wrong wasn't found on the bare walls or in any of the sparse furniture scattered about it. There were no enemies hiding anywhere near him as near as he could tell and he was confident enough in his own abilities to dismiss a foreign presence as the reason for his unsettled feeling. He lightly sniffed the air, but again found nothing that would leave him feeling as he did.

As near as he could tell, everything was right… but he knew that it wasn't.

Orochimaru slipped out of his bed, the stone floor cool against his bare feet. A wave of disorientation struck him as soon as he was standing and he nearly had to sit back down.

It wasn't the reason for his earlier disquiet, but he suddenly felt…_ weak_.

Orochimaru summoned chakra to his eyes and whispered, "Sharingan!"

Nothing happened. The world did not come into sharper focus, no flow of chakra became visible, and details that might otherwise be missed by regular eyes did not immediately catch his attention…

It was like he didn't even have it.

Orochimaru's eyes widened and he hurried to his private bathroom to look at himself.

Pale skin, yellow eyes, long black hair… but the face was wrong. He was not looking at the face of Uchiha Sasuke, as he had for so long, instead he was staring at his own face. With trembling fingers he reached up and pulled at the skin. It came away easily and fell into the sink with a wet plop that seemed to echo in his ears as he stared at the new face, that of a young woman.

Orochimaru remembered this face clearly, it was the one he'd taken after he was unable to take over Uchiha Itachi's body when they were both associated with Akatsuki. He'd kept it until he was forced to change following his tainted victory over his former sensei, Sarutobi Hiruzen, in which his ability to use his arms was sealed away by the old man.

He grabbed at the skin of this new face and tried to rip it off. His fingers dug into his scalp, but instead of finding another face below, all that his efforts yielded him was a small stream of blood that ran down the side of his head and dripped into the sink, covering the skin of the old mask with little red droplets.

Orochimaru's jaw flexed and his teeth ground together as he swallowed a scream of rage and fear.

_'This is impossible,'_ he hissed to himself. _'This is…'_ His mind began to trace back through the last things he remembered. It didn't take long to figure out why he'd felt that something was wrong when he woke up. Something _was_ wrong.

He'd conquered Konoha. He'd won. So why was he in a room that looked like it had been dug out of a cave? He remembered standing over the bleeding, broken body of the Rokudaime Hokage (though technically he hadn't actually been given the title), Uzumaki Naruto. He remembered their fight and how easy it had been to defeat Konoha's leader. He remembered looking around at the village and reveling in the glory of it being burned to the ground while his followers slaughtered anyone and everyone they could find.

He did not remember going to sleep. He didn't remember leaving the village. He didn't even remember killing Naruto.

_'Clever,'_ Orochimaru thought with a smile as he stepped away from the mirror and looked around the room. _'Very clever.'_

He brought his hands together and said, "Kai!"

Nothing changed.

Orochimaru frowned. As near as he could remember, he'd never in his whole life encountered a genjutsu that he couldn't break out of once he knew what was going on. His eyes unconsciously shifted upward where he could still feel the pain from trying to rip his skin away. He _should_ have woken up, so what was the problem?

Orochimaru closed his eyes and let his mind wander through all the different possibilities he could imagine. He wasn't caught in a genjutsu cast by Naruto, he was sure of that. For starters, Naruto had no talent for genjutsu and beyond that, even if he _did_ learn genjutsu, he wasn't a good enough ninja to catch someone as strong as Orochimaru in one of his amateurish techniques. Orochimaru also didn't think that someone else could have come along and captured him in an unbreakable genjutsu like this. Anyone that powerful would have been a known quantity after years of war and he was confident that he was the most powerful ninja in existence anyway.

Tsukuyomi was a good explanation for being unable to escape the genjutsu, but it didn't make sense for a number of reasons. Mainly, Tsukuyomi required a Sharingan to cast it and, as the last Uchiha, he was the only person left with a Sharingan. Also, his Sharingan should be able to fight Tsukuyomi off even if there was some previously unknown Uchiha wandering around casting genjutsu on unsuspecting shinobi.

With those options eliminated, what else was left?

He thought for a few minutes longer and then his eyes snapped open.

The Sword of Totsuka…

A tremble ran through Orochimaru's body. _'No, it can't be…'_

The Sword of Totsuka, also known as Sakegairi's Katan, was a legendary blade. Orochimaru had searched everywhere for it. He'd followed every little rumor, every legend, every hint of gossip looking for it, but it didn't seem to exist. After years of searching, he'd been forced to conclude that it must have been nothing more than a tall-tale – perhaps some great master of Fuuinjutsu had also wielded a sword and the legend had simply grown out of that.

The sword was supposed to be able to seal nearly anything and whatever it pierced would instantly be swept up into a blissful genjutsu for all of eternity with no hope of escape.

Orochimaru reached up and gently pressed his fingertips into the bleeding wounds he'd given himself when he tried to pull his face away. The pain was negligible, but still more than he would expect if he was sealed in a "blissful" genjutsu – though it was possible that the bliss was part of the legend that had been embellished since no one experiencing it could ever explain what it felt like.

Still, this felt very real.

He glanced around the room and frowned. It looked like one of the rooms he'd stayed in prior to taking Sasuke's body. He walked to the wooden door on the far side of the room and ripped it open.

Two guards were standing just outside, Sound hitai-ate adorning each of their heads. Both instantly snapped to attention and then bowed respectfully to him.

Orochimaru glared at them suspiciously.

"Orochimaru-sama, are you alright?" one of them asked. "You said you didn't want to be disturbed… but usually you are awake much earlier. We… we weren't sure…"

Orochimaru leaned closer to the man and frowned. "You look familiar."

The man's eyes shifted nervously and he swallowed once before saying, "I-I've been in charge of standing guard outside your bedroom door for nearly three months. You, um, you see me every morning when you wake…"

Orochimaru stared at him for a moment longer and then lost interest and turned to look at the other ninja. He stared at the nervous guard for nearly a minute without speaking. Finally, he asked, "Why did I tell you I didn't want to be disturbed?"

If they were trying to trick him – which was the only thing that could be happening besides him being stuck in an invincible genjutsu for all eternity – then he expected them be more prepared for his questioning. The faint gleam of sweat on the brow of the man before him and the way he kept swallowing and licking his lips nervously meant that they were either an illusion, poor actors, or that something else was going on.

"You… you didn't say. I-I… uh, _think_ that you wanted to be sure you were well rested before you began the journey to Sunagakure…"

Orochimaru frowned at the answer and looked away from the nervous guard. Talking about Sunagakure was a strange ploy if they were acting, he'd personally seen it crushed and scattered to the wind. Any idiot would know not to try to bluff him with something so obviously false.

These two didn't look like idiots… well, not _that_ big of idiots anyway.

"Why would I be going to Suna?" he demanded without looking at the guard.

In his peripheral, Orochimaru saw the man blanch as he stumbled about for an answer. "You… uh… you never said, but…" his voice died as he apparently realized that he was saying something he probably shouldn't be.

Orochimaru's hand shot out and caught him by the throat. "But what?"

"But… but, I heard a rumor that you were meeting with the Kazekage… to discuss an alliance against Konoha…"

Orochimaru released the guard and scowled down at him. This game or genjutsu or whatever it was, was growing annoying. "Gaara is dead," he said flatly.

The guard's eyes shifted towards his companion as his face showed his confusion. Apparently the two were sharing a silent conversation because the guard eventually shrugged and then said, "Gaara? Do you mean the Kazekage's son? I-I hadn't heard that he'd died."

Orochimaru's eyes widened and his whole body seemed to rock back as the information hit him. Gaara was the Kazekage's _son_? It had been decades since he, Kabuto, and Kimimaro had killed the Fourth Kazekage. In fact, it had been decades since Gaara became the _Fifth_ Kazekage. And it had been several years since Orochimaru had killed a second Kazekage…

He let out a slow breath as a new, impossible, idea occurred to him. What if he _wasn't_ in a genjutsu, or being tricked, or whatever else could explain what was happening. He didn't have the Sharingan. The two men seemed genuinely confused about him referring to Gaara when they were talking about the Fourth Kazekage. He didn't have any memory of leaving Konoha or anything other than fighting Naruto and…

An image of Naruto, his body being consumed by red, demonic chakra, flashed before Orochimaru's eyes and a new piece of the puzzle fell into place. Naruto would never let the Kyuubi out, especially not in his home village unless he was desperate… or planning something tricky. If this wasn't a genjutsu and it wasn't a trick… then could he really be in the past?

Orochimaru frowned thoughtfully, ignoring the two confused guards who kept shooting glances at each other behind his back. He didn't know any jutsu that could send a person back in time and, even if he did, he really had no reason to use it just as he was about to claim his final victory…

A Jikan Kuukan Ninjutsu of that magnitude would probably take massive amounts of chakra…

It was possible that few – if any – humans could produce that kind of chakra…

If it was incredibly chakra intensive, then it might only be possible for someone who had access to a near limitless supply of chakra…

Jinchuriki had such supplies of chakra, but there was only one of them left…

And coincidentally, the last of them had been standing in front of Orochimaru, drawing on massive amounts of chakra in the last memory he'd had before waking up in his bed.

"Orochimaru-sama?" a new voice asked gently, but with more confidence than the two guards had possessed.

Orochimaru blinked and looked up to find a young man with soft features and white hair framing his face. It was Kimimaro. He'd been dead for more than twenty years… but now he didn't even look sick as he had been right before his death. Perhaps this wild hypothesis wasn't so wild after all. Somehow Naruto had discovered a jutsu that was more powerful, more devastating, than anything Orochimaru had ever heard of. Naruto had always been one to laugh at the word "impossible." Now it seemed he'd come up with a way to snatch away everything Orochimaru had worked so hard for, all of those victories, all of the vanquished enemies, everything he'd accomplished.

But Naruto had messed up, as he – just like Jiraiya before him – was prone to do. He'd sent someone else back instead of himself… or maybe _as well as_ himself.

"I'm fine," Orochimaru said with a small shake of his head as plans began to form in his mind. "Kimimaro, send a message to the Kazekage and tell him we've been delayed by a new piece of important information." He turned to the guard who claimed to have been guarding his room for the past three months. "Call the jounin and have them meet me in my room. I have new orders for them." Without another word he turned, walked back into his room, and shut the door behind him.

Kimimaro and the guard quickly did as they were told while Orochimaru sat himself down in the small throne chair in his bedroom and began to plot his next move.

ooo

Orochimaru didn't leave his room for a week. He spent his days pacing his room or sitting in the stone throne that was almost the only other piece of furniture in the room besides his bed. He spent his nights in bed staring at the ceiling as he listened to the sounds of his base… plotting, always plotting.

The jounin that had been summoned on his first day back had been instructed to go to Konoha, some disguised as merchants, others actually slipping over the wall once they'd been told how to breach the barrier. They'd been ordered to find Uzumaki Naruto, but to stay as far away from him as they could while still collecting information on him. Anything unusual was to be reported as quickly as possible.

By the end of the week, there were reports that Naruto was apparently the clumsiest ninja alive, but otherwise unremarkable.

Orochimaru knew that Naruto was clumsy – and stupid – but what was being detailed in the reports seemed above and beyond what even he should have been capable of. It was suspicious that he'd be having trouble running and seemed to be incapable of putting up a decent fight in his sparing matches with his teammates, but Naruto's early abilities weren't well known. At this point in the original timeline, he'd been a nobody.

Then a report came in that he was overheard grumbling about "damn short legs."

The report had only been a few sentences long, but Orochimaru had stared at it for over a half hour. It might have seemed like circumstantial evidence, but it was exactly the sort of thing that he would have expected to find if Naruto had actually managed to send himself back in time. Being a full grown adult for so long and then suddenly being thrust back into a weak, small body of a child was bound to be far more disorienting than appearing a weaker, but still full-sized, body.

Circumstantial or not, Orochimaru was certain that he really was in the past and that Naruto had come back as well.

A small part of him chuckled at the idea that Naruto had been stupid enough to send himself back to his own childhood without even considering how difficult it might be to adjust to a new body.

It was one of the reasons that Orochimaru himself had always sought _adult_ bodies to inhabit when he used his Fushi Tensei… though taking Sasuke as a child might have been easier than the hassle he'd been forced to go through to ultimately gain control of the body. Of course, he'd been willing to go through that hassle and more to get his hands on the Sharingan.

With his hunch confirmed, Orochimaru immediately began to put his plans into motion. When he'd first considered that Naruto might have come back – and really, even if he hadn't it would have been worth it – he'd thought of having the boy assassinated before he caused any trouble, but that idea had been quickly discarded for two reasons. First, and foremost, he wanted Naruto's jutsu. The ability to time travel was possibly even more exciting to him than the ability to live forever using Fushi Tensei. Second, if anyone killed Naruto, it was going to be him… and he was busy for the time being.

The first thing he did was send another note to the Kazekage humbly requesting a new meeting and hinting at vital information that needed to be passed on.

It had been a long time, but he still remembered how to play the man like a shamisen. The Kazekage was a proud, arrogant man who felt that his village was being unjustly marginalized by the Wind Country's own daimyo. Bowing low, speaking humbly, and generally groveling before him were the quickest ways to earn his favor.

It had been a relief to finally kill him when the time came.

While he waited for the Kazekage's response, he also began to set in motion plans to bring about a similar war to the one he'd started in the future. A couple of towns along the small southern border of the Lightning Country and the southwestern border of the Earth Country were going to be hit by some mysterious ninja who left very few survivors and only tiny traces of evidence linking them to Konoha in the Lightening Country and Suna in the Earth Country. Those ordered to carry out the attacks were instructed to be extremely careful in how they went about it. Dropping something as obvious as a hitai-ate would lead all but the stupidest ninja to think that it was possibly a frame job. It was better to make them work for the answers he wanted them to reach – especially since he had time to let it slowly build up while he created his alliances.

With those plans in motion and formal requests for audiences sent to Iwa and Kumo, he made his way to Sunagakure to meet with the Kazekage.

ooo

"You're late," the Kazekage remarked as soon as he and Orochimaru were alone in the small circular room with bare walls and only two windows overlooking the southern portion of the village and, beyond that, the tall plateau that served as a wall around the village and partially protected it from the storms of the desert that surrounded it. The only furniture in the room was two stone chairs they were sitting in and a small wooden table with Suna's symbol carved into it that lay between them. The room was not the one normally used when entertaining foreign dignitaries, but that room tended to attract attention when it was occupied and they definitely didn't want to attract attention.

Orochimaru glanced out the window at the midday sunlight and smiled. "Forgive me, I was under the impression that I was early. Was our time changed?"

"You were supposed to have been here nearly two weeks ago," the Kazekage replied somewhat-coldly. "I don't like being jerked around."

Again Orochimaru bowed his head. "Of course. I would not have asked to delay our meeting were it not vitally important."

"And what is it that was so _vitally_ important?"

Orochimaru waited for a moment, letting the tension build, and then softly said, "I have uncovered a plot against you. There are traitors, highly placed traitors, in your midst."

The Kazekage absorbed the information in silence for a moment. "I trust you have some sort of proof," he said at last, a hint of belief already in his voice "or at least a source for this information."

Orochimaru almost forgot himself and smiled, but caught himself before his cheek muscles gave him away with any hint of twitching. "I would not have brought it up if I wasn't sure and didn't have proof, Kazekage-sama. My men are holding your proof in our camp, just outside the village. We caught a messenger traveling between Iwa and Kumo, cutting through our territory. I can't reveal all of our methods," at this Orochimaru did smile because the methods he had used had implanted the information in the "messenger's" brain, not the other way around, "but we were aware of important – and troubling – correspondence between them… he more than backed up the information already uncovered by our spies. Whenever you like, we will gladly turn him over to your interrogation specialists so you can corroborate our findings."

"And what findings do you believe we will find when we… examine… him?"

"Iwa is trying to enter into a more overt alliance with Kumo. To convince Kumo of their capabilities, they offered evidence of their abilities to turn members of your council as well as…" he stopped and bit his lip, not nervously, but thoughtfully as if he were trying to think of how to break some bad news to the Kazekage. "They claim that one of your children is involved as well… though the messenger didn't seem to know which one."

"That's ridiculous," the Kazekage snapped. "Temari and Kankuro are loyal and Gaara… Gaara is incapable of something like that."

"I hope, for your sake, that you are correct," Orochimaru said softly. "I am only relaying to you what we learned through our own interrogation. However, Oto is small and our ninja force is still being built up and trained. It is possible that something was overlooked or a mistake was made. If that is the case, Suna's ninja will be able to find our error."

The Kazekage held up his hand and waved away the exceptionally false modesty. "I don't doubt your word that Iwa _claims_ that one of my children is involved; only that they actually are. Gaara is the only one I'd believe willing to do something so stupid and he is not capable of pulling it off. It would take a level of duplicity that someone like him lacks. He has all of the subtlety of a sandstorm."

Orochimaru bowed his head once more, giving the impression that he was conceding the point. He hadn't wanted to convince the Kazekage to do something so stupid as kill his children, only to put the idea in his head. When things fell into place later, the supposed plot would be in the back of the Kazekage's mind and _then_ he'd do something as stupid as killing his children… and possibly get killed in the process. It would rob Suna of at least one powerful ninja, its future leader, and remove a potential ally of Naruto.

He could, of course, have just gone and killed Gaara himself, but doing so would alert Naruto to the fact that someone else was making changes and he didn't want that until it was too late for Naruto to save himself.

Plus, it was fun to mess with the Kazekage.

The Kazekage was silent for a moment, no doubt stewing over the idea that Gaara (or Temari or Kankuro) was plotting to overthrow him, but then asked, "In light of this new information – assuming that what you've uncovered is correct – how will this change our plans for the Chuunin Exam?"

"I'm afraid that it will have to put our plans for Konoha on hold for the moment. If Iwa really does have highly placed spies in your village, they will need to be weeded out before we can risk so much in a surprise attack on as powerful a village as Konoha. If our hand was tipped before hand, we would not have the forces needed to destroy Konoha."

The Kazekage grunted, but nodded. "I agree. Even the initial estimates for what would be needed to overrun Konoha would leave us far to weak to fight a war on the Iwa border should they choose to attack at that time."

"Do you still intend to enter your children?"

At this, the Kazekage smirked. "Of course. Even if I can't watch the village that the Wind daimyo has put so much faith in burn to the ground, I will enjoy seeing the best prospects for the next generation of each village being crushed by three Sand-nin. It will show that we are not a village on the decline as everyone seems to think."

"You still plan to attend, then?"

The younger man shook his head. "I cannot rescind my acceptance of the Hokage's offer. It would be rude and would tip off any traitors that I know of their presence. If they got to ground before I've uncovered their identities, they might never receive the proper reward for their acts. I will, however, go prepared for any… _surprises_ that might come up."

Orochimaru smiled, rose to his feet and bowed. "We will continue to monitor any travel within our borders by potential messengers. If any new information comes up, we will of course share it with our Suna allies."

The Kazekage gave him a semi-respectful nod – not quite what would be given to an equal, but close – and then the two parted ways.

As Orochimaru was escorted towards the edge of the village and glanced at the Suna-nin walking with him and smiled. "You're name is Yura, isn't it?"

The jounin had dark hair that hung down in front of his right eye and a scraggly goatee on his chin. He looked at Orochimaru, raising his one visible eyebrow in unspoken question and then said, "Yes, Orochimaru-san."

"I have a message for you."

His fingers formed the correct seals before Yura even knew what was happening. When it was all over, there really was a traitor in Sunagakure.

ooo

Rin sighed as she looked up from her paperwork and let her head fall back before rolling it to the side to stretch her tired neck muscles. A few pleasant pops could be heard in her neck and then she leaned forward and stared at the five sheets of paper in front of her.

It was stupid, really. Why did she have to fill out all these forms after every procedure?

Well, she knew the reason: Old man Hisoka, the other – and much older – healer in the village was a control freak with an extreme case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, at least when it came to keeping track of what had been done to who and when.

Child gets a scraped knee that needs about five seconds of Shousen no Jutsu to fix it? Fill out three forms detailing the severity of the damage, which leg it was on, who the child was, and where he was when he fell and hurt himself. Then file them in separate containers so that if one or even two are destroyed, there will still be a record.

Old woman needs some acupuncture treatment to help with her arthritis? Fill out the forms and file them.

Toddler stubs his toe? Forms, forms, and more forms.

It was ridiculous, it was annoying, but it was worth it… mostly.

Despite her annoyance at working under someone whose only qualification for being her superior was his age and length of service, Rin really and truly loved what she did. In Konoha, she'd been a medic-nin. That meant that she'd had the slightly-hypocritical job of killing as many people as possible and then doing everything she could to keep those on her team from dying. The Hippocratic Oath didn't apply to medic-nin.

At the time, she hadn't even cared about the killing and for the most part, she still didn't, though it was harder to feel so detached when she saw the results of the wars on non-combatants. Even if killing her enemies – or the enemies of her village, anyway – was okay, the toll ninja battles could have on those living in the surrounding area was harder to excuse. In the last year, she'd amputated two legs and an arm from people who accidentally tripped some long-forgotten trap that had been set during the wars. She'd also had the unpleasant duty of telling two families that their child was dead despite her – and Old Hisoka's – best efforts.

Still, trials, annoyances, and uncomfortable conversations aside, she was doing good her and she was pretty happy. She was away from Konoha and the memories that it held. Away from sights and sounds that reminded her of Obito. And, most importantly, away from Hatake Kakashi.

Kakashi. Even now, years after the last time they saw each other, the thought of him caused her face to flush slightly. She wasn't a little girl with a crush on the talented genius she was teamed up with, but there were still feelings there.

She'd heard that you never really get over your first love. She wasn't sure if she really bought that – she _felt_ over him, most of the time – but it was definitely true that those feelings seemed to linger, even if they had mostly been dismissed.

Given his lack of feelings towards her, it would be best if she could completely dismiss all of them, but it seemed that she couldn't quite do that.

Obito would probably have made fun of her… after getting mad at Kakashi and trying to show off for her benefit, of course. A part of her wished that she'd understood and accepted his feelings back then, though perhaps it was better to have lingering feelings for an emotionless friend than for the memory of someone long lost.

Rin sighed again and brushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. If the case had been something small, she might have dumped the forms and just pretended it didn't happen, but news traveled fast in the little town and a woodsman almost cutting his leg off was pretty big news. No doubt Old Hisoka had already heard about it and would be looking to read her write up on it later. If it wasn't exactly where it was supposed to be, she'd hear about it again, and again, and again, and again…

"Rin-san!"

Her head snapped up as the door was flung open and a young man – Masaru, if she was remembering correctly, she'd seen him when his mother had her last (and after six, Rin hoped it would be the last) baby a few months back – ran into the room. Despite her best efforts, her hand still moved towards the weapon pouch that she no longer carried. Old instincts died hard.

Masaru probably didn't realize that her subconscious had just tried to kill him, but his eyes were still wide with fright and his face was flushed from sprinting a pretty long distance to reach her.

"What's the matter?" she asked rising from her seat and grabbing the bag of medical supplies that hung from the back of her chair. In her haste, she accidentally knocked a bottle of ink all over the report she'd been working on. Hisoka would be irritated with her (almost as irritated as she'd be when he made her rewrite it), but she wasn't thinking about that at the moment.

"Moriko-chan… she… she…"

Rin didn't need him to tell her much more for the moment. Moriko was a little girl on the cusp of womanhood. She was still cute, but was reaching the point where cuteness became beauty. She'd been begging Rin to help her make healing creams out of the herbs she liked to collect in the surrounding woods. Rin had actually been planning on speaking to Hisoka about letting the girl become an apprentice, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. Though Rin had already killed over a dozen men at that age, the little town did not allow its children to enter formal training until they were thirteen and Moriko still had two months to go.

"Show me where she is," Rin said as she pushed Masaru back through the doorway.

He ran as fast as he could out of the village and into the woods. It didn't take long to reach the spot and Rin could see why Masaru had been too upset to talk. Moriko's body had been cut open, her pretty brown eyes stared unseeing up at the forest canopy as she lay in a small pool of blood.

Rin didn't bother checking for vitals. She knew death when she saw it.

Masaru stared at the little girl's body for a moment and then turned and threw up into a bush. Rin couldn't really blame him. She'd seen – and done – too many things far worse than this, but a part of her wanted to throw up as well. It was hard to say what had killed Moriko, but the cuts looked too rough for it to be a traditional weapon. Possibly a wild animal was the culprit, though the body did not look like it had been mauled or chewed on. It was as if a single strike of a claw had killed her and then the animal had left the body cooling on the forest floor.

A twig snapped and Rin's pulled her eyes away from the corpse. She stood very still, listening intently for another noise that didn't belong to the still heaving Masaru. Whoever or whatever it was wasn't trying to be quite as more sounds could be heard with a regularity that indicated the noise-maker was human.

Rin's hand curled into a fist. Had Moriko been killed by a person who was now coming back to examine his or her handiwork? If so, there wouldn't be much of them left over to identify… and she wouldn't even feel hypocritical about it.

The bushes in front of her parted and a pale man with long dark hair stepped into the clearing.

Rin felt the blood drain from her face as she stared at him. Any thought of killing him – regardless of whether or not he'd killed Moriko – instantly fled from her mind. It wasn't that she wouldn't still want to kill him if he was responsible, it just wouldn't be possible.

She'd never officially met Orochimaru, but she knew who he was and had seen him in action. If he was here to kill her or Masaru, then the fight was already over and they'd never be seen or heard from again.

Orochimaru's intense yellow eyes seemed to size her up and then drifted down to Moriko's small form. "What happened?" he asked.

From her memories of him, Rin expected there to be a smile on his face or a chuckle in his voice. She'd once seen him sit atop a nearly two meters high pile of the bodies of both allies and enemies and laughed at the sight of the battlefield before him.

"I said: What happened?" he repeated as she continued to stare at him.

Rin gave herself a shake and looked down at Moriko. "I don't know, it looks like an animal attack, but sometimes people stumble across old traps from the wars."

She'd been so focused on Orochimaru that the sudden cry of grief from behind her nearly caused her to jump. Rin turned and found a small crowd was hurrying towards them. At the front of the group were Moriko's mother and father. Rin had arrived shortly after the little girl was born, so she hadn't been there to witness it first hand, but apparently Moriko was the result of years and years of attempts to start a family. There had been somewhere in the neighborhood of four miscarriages and two false pregnancies.

Moriko was considered their miracle child… and now she was dead.

Rin started to move towards them, unsure of what to say, but was stopped by a strong arm around her bicep. "Her parents?" Orochimaru asked.

"Yes. She was their only child."

Orochimaru looked down at the girl once more and said, "How sad." He released her and knelt next to the body, looking down at Moriko's soft, lifeless features. "I came here to ask something of you, though I'm not sure if you will accept it yet."

"What's that?"

"I want you to betray Konoha."

The way he said it, so straight forward, so nonchalantly almost made her think that he was joking, but when he looked up and his yellow, vaguely snake-like eyes met hers, she knew he was completely serious. "No."

"You haven't heard my full offer," he replied with a smile. "I'm not asking you to do anything that will cause harm to Konoha… not yet, anyway… all I want is your help in a certain matter that might actually _benefit_ the village, though they won't see it that way."

Rin shook her head, looking away from him. "I might have… _issues_ with Konoha, but I won't betray it."

"Not even for Obito?"

Rin's eyes widened and her head snapped back towards Orochimaru. "What did you say?"

"Your dead teammate, you miss him, right? I can bring him back… in exchange for this favor."

Rin swallowed hard, aware of the way her heart was pounding against the inside of her chest. "Obito is dead. He's gone."

"Gone, but not forgotten, right? And 'gone' doesn't have to be permanent, not to me. Allow me to demonstrate." His fingers began to form seals, dozens of them in a matter of seconds, and then he placed his hand on Moriko's chest. The earth slowly began to slide up her body, covering her completely and then dragging her into its depths before sealing itself up as if it had never been disturbed.

Behind Rin, Moriko's parents cried out in alarm. Rin looked back at them and found them being restrained by some of the others. She turned back to Orochimaru and said, "You would take away their right to bury their only child?"

"I'm making it unnecessary," Orochimaru replied as he began forming more seals. "Kuchiyose: Edo Tensei."

A large coffin-shaped stone box exploded out of the ground right in front of him. Rin stared up at it in awe, as did the townspeople behind her. With a slight creaking sound, the stone lids opened and then fell forward with a mighty crash.

Rin stepped back, her mouth hanging open in shock at the sight before her as Moriko stepped out of the coffin, her wounds still there and her face still as ashen as it had been when she'd sunk into the ground, but her eyes filled with life once more.

"It's impossible," Rin whispered.

Moriko looked around in confusion. "What happened?" she asked. She looked down at her chest which was still cut open and frowned. "Am I… dead?"

Orochimaru seemed oblivious to the shocked faces of his audience as he took a small slip of paper from a pouch he was carrying as well as a brush and some ink. He carefully scribbled some seals onto the paper and then pulled a kunai out and attached the paper to its handle. "Tell the others to look away for a moment," he whispered to Rin. "This will not be pleasant for them to see."

Rin did as he told her and, under her stern glare, all obeyed. She turned back around just in time to see Orochimaru plunge the kunai into the back of Moriko's head. The little girl gave a small gasp of surprise and several in the crowd turned around just as Orochimaru pulled his hand free. Instantly, Moriko's wound seemed to fade away, as did the ashen color of her skin. In only a few seconds she looked exactly as she had when she'd last been in Rin's clinic begging for help with her healing creams.

Two forms rushed past Rin, Moriko's parents had taken advantage of the awe of those around them and pulled free from their restrainers. They threw their arms around their daughter and wept openly in relief. Moriko didn't return their embrace immediately, instead glancing over her shoulder to look at Orochimaru questioningly.

He smiled kindly, the expression looked foreign on his face. "Be their perfect daughter and enjoy your life," he said.

She nodded and turned back to her parents, smiling, hugging them, and joining them in their tears.

Rin felt almost numb as she watched it all. This was a level of healing – if it could even be called that – that she had never even dreamed of. Bringing someone back from the dead… it was incredible. With a jutsu like that, Orochimaru's offer of bringing Obito back wasn't idle talk.

She stepped closer to him. "What do you want me to do? I won't hurt anyone, especially not…"

"Kakashi, I know." He smiled. Rin thought the smile looked a little triumphant. "I wouldn't ask you to do that. In fact, I'll guarantee his safety for the time being." Rin didn't like that Kakashi's safety was only a temporary guarantee, but she couldn't object just yet and she hadn't agreed to anything. "All I want is the Kyuubi."

"You mean, Uzumaki Naruto?" She said the name with a little distaste, she couldn't help it. She understood that it wasn't the boys fault and she'd actually been very happy about Naruto when he was still in Kushina's womb prior to everything falling apart, but now he was the vessel for a monster that had stolen some of the last semblances of a happy life from her. That was a hard thing to get over.

"You think Uzumaki Naruto is just a human with something evil inside of him?" Orochimaru asked with a snort. "It's the Kyuubi. The most powerful of the Bijuu. With a swing of its tail it could topple mountains or cause a tsunami. You were there when it attacked; do you really think something that could produce that level of malevolent chakra could be held within a little baby? That any seal performed by a human could bind it?"

"If anyone could do it, the Fourth could."

"Yes, the Fourth was an amazing ninja, but not infallible. He was too late to save Obito during _that_ mission, he didn't stop the Kyuubi until hundreds of Konoha's citizens had been killed, and he lost his own life in his desperate plan to stop the monster…" his voice trailed off and he looked up at the forest canopy and sighed. "What was the Kyuubi?"

Rin's brain was so busy coming up with a proper retort to Orochimaru's points about the Fourth, that his question caught her off guard. "It's a demon, I guess. A force of nature attracted to areas where there's a large collection of human malice."

"Yes, but _what_ is it?"

Rin frowned. "A kitsune?"

"A kitsune. And according to folklore, what do kitsune tend to do?"

"I don't pay attention to folklore," Rin said, turning her eyes back to the happy family, "but I guess their supposed to play tricks and pranks on people… sometimes they even transform into pretty women."

"Would you be surprised to know then, that Naruto is known as a prankster in Konoha?"

"Lots of kids are pranksters. The Fourth said that your old teammate, Jiraiya, played jokes on people all the time."

"Not like Naruto… and Naruto's best known jutsu at the moment is called 'Sexy no Jutsu' – a simple henge that he uses to transform into a beautiful, naked woman."

"Just another prank."

"Naruto has the Kyuubi in him, he plays pranks, and he thinks it's funny to turn into a beautiful woman… are you sure it's just a coincidence?"

Rin closed her eyes and looked down for a moment, thinking it over. It _was_ a strange coincidence, but not completely out of the realm of possibility, right? "I don't know," she admitted, "but it could be."

Orochimaru nodded. "Yes, it could be. Let me offer you some other possibilities. What if the Fourth was unable to seal away the Kyuubi completely? Or perhaps was only able to seal away some of its power? What if it was weakened and had no choice but to take on human form while it figured out how to regain its strength so it could destroy the village? What if Naruto was never Naruto, but only a kitsune, a yako? Or, what if a demon of such unsurpassing power was able to _somehow_ overwhelm the baby it was placed inside of, how would we know? A sudden increase in power? A habit of playing pranks? A tendency to transform into a pretty woman in order to seduce or trick older men?" He shook his head. "A few weeks ago, Naruto created over a hundred shadow clones with Kage Bunshin – despite being ranked last in his class in terms of ability. He beat an instructor to within an inch of his life and was only stopped by a second instructor who was in the area. That is a power beyond what a 'normal' boy should have, no matter what is sealed inside of it. He… or rather _it_… is accessing the powers of the Kyuubi, that is the only explanation. How long before another disaster befalls Konoha… a disaster that Hatake Kakashi is serving as the jounin sensei for?"

"I don't believe you," Rin whispered. "Minato-sensei… he wouldn't have messed up like that."

"Then believe this: Uchiha Obito loved you, cared for you, gave his life to save you… and the only way to bring him back is to deliver Naruto to me. You can say that Obito is dead, but you know that I can bring him back. If you pass this chance up, it will be like killing him all over again."

Rin's jaw flexed. "He would hate me for bringing him back by sacrificing an innocent boy… especially _that_ innocent boy… I'd need _real_ proof before I'd do it."

"Come with me, then, and I'll find you your real proof."

Rin looked at him in surprise. "Now?"

"I'm on a tight schedule."

He allowed her to return to the town and say a few goodbyes to the people she'd worked so hard for during the past few years. She packed up a few belongings and then headed out on what she told everyone was going to be a short trip to refine her abilities. Moriko was sad to see her go, but happy that she would be training with the man who had brought her back to life.

From there, they traveled west, moving quickly because – as Orochimaru kept saying – they were on a tight schedule. They visited a mining town where Orochimaru's spies claimed Kakashi and his team would be doing a mission. Because Kakashi was on the team, they had to be very careful not to get too close, but they were able to observe Naruto decimate a large group of bandits with little apparent effort. Rin had pointed out that the other boy on Naruto's team had done just as much, but she could see that Naruto was much stronger than he was supposed to be (if Orochimaru was telling the truth about him being ranked last in his class). From there, they watched the group enter the forest and followed at a greater distance. Because of the danger of being detected, they weren't allowed to get close enough to really see or even hear what was going on, but after a while the fighting broke out and they could move in closer.

Rin was standing on a tree branch at the edge of a meadow, doing everything she could to mask her presence, when she got her proof. It had been years since she'd felt anything so terrifying as the killer intent rolling off of Naruto.

As they left the area after Naruto thrust his fist into his enemy's skull, Orochimaru didn't even say "I told you so".

There was no need.

ooo

A few days later, Orochimaru was still smiling, at least on the inside. Naruto had preformed better than he could have hoped for. Kill intent, red Kyuubi chakra, a gruesome kill, his nemesis had practically delivered Rin to him on a silver platter. Of course, killing the little girl and then raising her from the dead had probably helped his cause as well.

A part of him wondered how long it would take for the townspeople to see her regenerate an injury and start to change their opinion of the miracle he'd worked. It would almost be funny to let them see what was lying under the mask of their restored child. How much would they rejoice if they new that the body the little girl inhabited had come from the next town over?

Not that it mattered. Things were going perfectly. Rin was his servant once more. The Raikage and the Tsuchikage had both readily signed onto the idea of attacking Konoha during the Chuunin Exam, especially since they'd been getting reports of some of their border towns being destroyed by a group of "bandits" that acted very much like shinobi and who had left behind a few small traces of material – a kunai here, a ripped piece of cloth there – that seemed to hint that Konoha and Suna were behind the attacks. Distrust and smoldering animosity ran deep between the villages, especially those that had been defeated in the past wars.

Kumo was the first to agree to the plan, and their acceptance helped bring Iwa in.

And now Orochimaru was meeting with the Raikage to discuss something that the Sound had recently discovered.

"WHAT!?!" the Raikage roared as his large fists slammed down on his desk. "Already?!?" His dark skinned face twitched irritably as his blond mustache shifted back and forth while his jaw flexed and he ground his teeth together.

Orochimaru nodded. "I believe so. My spy network is not as extensive within their borders as it is within Konoha, but I have never completely trusted Iwagakure and it seems that perhaps I was correct in my distrust. An aid revealed to one of my spies that their council is already discussing whether or not they might break the alliance after Suna falls and while your ninja are occupied with the large ninja corps of Konoha."

"I find it difficult to believe that the Tsuchikage would risk so much."

"They have great faith in their jinchuriki. Kumo is the only other village with two, so they believe that after the war with Suna, Kumo will be the larger threat to their superiority."

"That drunkard Roshi the Volcano and that bastard Sajin?" the Raikage almost laughed. "They don't stand a chance against Bee and Yugito!"

"If I may," Orochimaru said with a concealed smile, "that could be why they would wish a double-cross when the moment is right, while you are unable to use both Kirabi and Yugito against them because you are busy fighting Konoha."

The Raikage took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to calm himself. "Perhaps this plan is foolish. It is difficult for two of the great nations to trust each other, much less work together for these exact reasons."

Orochimaru nodded. "I do not want to see war between you and Iwa, but I think that there is a solution. Should Iwa turn on you, Oto will side with Kumo. We are not many, but there are strong ninja within our ranks. We stand along the natural route between Iwa and Kumo and know the land well. We'll set traps and be prepared for them should they attempt to cross our land to get to you and we will be able to send you advanced warning… but our numbers and the fact that we will be fighting in the wars against Suna and Konoha will me that we wouldn't be able to hold them for long. You must crush Konoha quickly in order to be ready for Iwa's treachery."

The Raikage nodded, a small smile forming on his lips. "_That_ won't be a problem."

ooo

About a month later, Orochimaru sat in the throne-like chair in his private room and smiled as reports came in about the success of the war so far. It was only a few hours old, but already the seeds of Konoha's destruction and the manipulations of his "allies" were in place. The Raikage had his men pushing forward into the Fire Country, destroying everything in their path with Kirabi at the head of the army. Konoha would catch on soon enough to what was happening, but it didn't matter. They had probably been caught off guard by the fact that the attack had not come from Suna or Oto (assuming Naruto was smart enough to tell someone what he thought would happen in the future).

Iwa was set to ambush the Kazekage and his little contingent as they returned from the Chuunin Exam. The Kazekage had been partially warned, so he was likely to survive, but that was fine, Gaara was the real target. With Yura believing that Sasori had ordered him to try to kill the Kazekage and then point the finger of blame at Gaara, the Kazekage's suspicions that his youngest son was part of some coup would be confirmed and Gaara would be killed.

Most importantly, Naruto would soon be in his grasp.

It had been several hours since the Chuunin Exam should have ended and Rin's part of the plan should have already began. Kimimaro had been dispatched to make sure that Naruto arrived even if no one else did. Orochimaru's favorite disciple had begun to display some of the signs of his weakening body, but unless he was forced to really push himself, he would be okay for a short while longer before the disease really began to take hold of him. Once Orochimaru had the ability to time travel, one of the things he planned to do was figure out how to save his potential vessel so he could enjoy what should have been a perfect host-body… at least once.

"Orochimaru-sama!" a messenger said as he hurried into the room and knelt before Orochimaru.

"You have news?"

"Tayuya has returned. She has the captive you requested."

Orochimaru breathed in the sweat aroma of success and smiled. "Excellent. Has he already been placed in the room?"

"Yes, Orochimaru-sama."

Without another word, Orochimaru rose and headed towards his destiny.

The room Naruto was in was fairly large and almost completely pitch-black except for the small area around the table where the blond had been tied down. He stepped in and closed the door behind him. After only a few minutes, Naruto began to stir, his eyes slowly opening and then closing against the light that shone down on him.

Orochimaru waited until he opened them again and began to try to look around. The drugs Rin had put into his system still seemed to be affecting him because his movements were halting and sluggish.

Finally, he couldn't hold it in any longer. "Ku ku ku…"

Once more, he'd won; he would crush Konoha. Kill Sarutobi slowly from a distance to destroy the village's spirit and allow someone more easily manipulated, such as Danzo, to come into power. He would turn the villages against each other until none were strong enough to oppose him. He would crush Akatsuki so that they wouldn't be a thorn in his side.

And then he'd be the most powerful force in the ninja world and, with Naruto's help, he would never die or lose his power.

o

o

A/N: Well, there you have it. Orochimaru's journey was certainly less… _detailed_ than Naruto's, but you only needed the highlights anyway. If I had more time, I'd probably work on not making it seem so rushed, but I am literally leaving for the airport in less than an hour and don't actually have time to work on it. If the chapter isn't posted now, it won't be posted for at least a week, so it'll have to do as is.

The next chapter, that will be the first chapter of Here and Now, will be sort of a series of short clips from the war, but I've now decided will also be interspersed with scenes featuring Naruto (do in part to popular demand). Basically, you'll get what's going on with Konoha, Naruto's teammates/friends, and Gaara and his siblings, and you'll get to see Naruto being tortured! How fun is that!?!? Anyway, I think it will work as a good 'prologue' of sorts for Here and Now as it gets you caught up with where everyone is and what's been happening during the time skip… which I guess won't really be _skipped_ so much as _skimmed_ over. Like I said before the chapter, Here and Now will start up at the beginning of January as I'm going to be out of town for the Christmas holiday and have no intention of taking time away from enjoying the warm weather of Florida to write fanfiction… well, not _much_ time anyway! ;)

Thanks for reading. Please review.

Kai – "Cancel" or "Release" The word normally said when canceling a genjutsu with chakra. The user simply stops the flow of chakra within his or her body and dispels the illusion. In past chapters, I've just used the word "release" but given that I try to have all jutsu in Japanese (because it sounds cooler), I should be consistent and do the same thing with this one.

The Sword of Totsuka – The sword used by Itachi's Susanoo (one of his Mangekyo Sharingan Techniques). In canon, it sealed Orochimaru away after he nearly took Sasuke over. In my timeline, Itachi was killed before then and Orochimaru never saw it. As near as I can tell, the sword is actually just a part of Susanoo and not something that Itachi found or was given or anything special like that… though I could be wrong there. Probably the legend grew up around its use by an Uchiha who could use Susanoo (Madara maybe?).

Fuuinjutsu – "Sealing Technique"

Jikan Kuukan Ninjutsu – "Space/Time Ninjutsu"

Fushi Tensei – "Immortality Jutsu" Orochimaru's jutsu that allows him to transfer his soul to a new hosts body.

Shamisen – A Japanese instrument similar to a guitar (actually, it looks more like a banjo to me, but you get the idea) with three strings.

Shousen no Jutsu – "Mystical Palm Technique"

Kuchiyose: Edo Tensei – "Summoning: Impure World Resurrection." This is a forbidden technique that is used to raise the dead. It requires a living sacrifice to do so (the body will be transformed to look like whatever is being summoned).


	44. Not a Chapter

Author's Note: This is, obviously, not a chapter. For those of you who are confused as to why this story is being updated at the same time as the sequel, please feel free to stop reading now and go (hopefully) enjoy the new chapter - which actually is a chapter - of that story. This update is merely to make sure that anyone who had been reading Time and Again, but had not realized that the sequel, Here and Now, wass already up were aware of what was going on. Hopefully, most of you have already found your way over to Here and Now, but for those of you who haven't, you've now recieved your notice. The new story can, of course, be found under my name. I hope that you enjoy it.

Thanks for reading,

Kyle


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