Kakashi sighed as he looked at his gathered four-man team. They were just as he expected them to be.
Sasuke was brooding.
Sakura was split between looking with longing at the Uchiha teammate and glaring with barely held anger at the blond kunoichi.
Naru was smiling, humming a tune, and oddly juggling three kunai with one hand.
And the one he expected to be the loudest member at the moment seemed to be nodding off. Okay, not all of them are like I was expecting. “Didn’t sleep too well, Naruto?” he asked.
The blond male just released a loud yawn. “I spent all yesterday after our meeting learning tree-walking,” he said.
Kakashi could only blink at that. Of the entire group, both Uzumaki children should have been unable to suffer from chakra exhaustion. But yet here he was, almost dead to the world. “And how does tree walking practice make one tired?” he asked.
Naru just smirked as he brother focused a glare at her. “Anko-sensei,” he said, nearly spitting out the name, “thought I would learn it quicker using Taju Kage Bunshin no Jutsu combined with snakes on the ground in case I failed,” he said. Having the memories of so many snake bites hadn’t helped his sleep, or the constant use of the high-level clone technique. “I’ve never been so tired in my life,” he mused, as he felt his eyes drooping again.
Naru just continued to smile. What Anko-sensei had never lacked was interesting ways to get performance. She just wondered what her brother would do when she used water moccasins to help with water walking.
Kakashi slowly put his book away as he tried to pry the image of using snakes to motivate a successful try out of his mind. I definitely need to make certain she doesn’t get assigned to this team … in any capacity, he thought, hiding his shudder. “Okay then, today we have a D-rank mission. We’ve been assigned to find a missing pet of the Fire Lord.”
“Not that damned cat again,” sighed Naru.
“You’ve done this before?” asked Kakashi. He would have thought the girl had graduated at the same time Naruto did.
“Anko-sensei convinced the Old Man to let me try it with her one day,” Naru sighed. “It’s the only time I’ve ever seen an animal try and commit suicide by trying to make a poisonous snake bite it.”
Even Sasuke blinked at that. “So we’re supposed to find a suicidal cat and return it to someone who made a cat suicidal?” he asked.
Naru nodded. “I think it does this every year.”
The Uchiha could only nod as he leaned back against the tree. He wanted to snort at the absurdity of such a thing, but he didn’t want to spend the rest of the day being chased by the blond kunoichi. How was he supposed to train if he had to spend so much time avoiding her attempts to unman him? He eventually did have plans for that area, you know.
The fact that said attempts could be used for training purposes were not lost on him. He just didn’t want his fangirls to get the idea that such was the way to his heart. He may not be outgoing, but he definitely wasn’t a moron either.
“Naru?”
“Hmm?” she responded, looking for the missing cat. She wanted this painful mission over with. It was bad enough to be repeating it again, but at least this time she wasn’t doing it as part of Anko-sensei’s training: get the cat before the snakes do.
“How’d you graduate?” Naruto asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I graduated because of Mizuki-sensei tricking me,” he said.
“Get the scroll from the Hokage, learn something from it, and become a Genin,” she said.
“Yeah,” he replied, “happened to you?”
She nodded as she spotted some tracks and began to follow them, her brother close behind. “Yeah, except I knew from Anko-sensei what it was. She talked to the Old Man, got the scroll, and set up an ANBU team to drop in on him when he confessed. I actually had time to learn a few techniques on there.
“Boy was he surprised when Anko-sensei dropped in on his little argument with Iruka-sensei,” she said with a smile. “Of course, after that, Anko-sensei started spending more time with Iruka-sensei,” she murmured. She had a pretty good idea why, but she didn't want to think about two people she saw as family doing such things.
“So that’s how you graduated?” Naruto asked.
She just shrugged. “I guess. Anko-sensei said not to worry too much about it if the teachers at the Academy failed me. I already learned about the furball in my gut, so she said that she and the Hokage would be watching my test. After talking with the teachers, they assured me I had passed, even without having to demonstrate Kage Bushin no Jutsu,” she said.
Naruto just nodded. “Man, too bad, beating Mizuki felt really good,” he mused.
Naru paused at that. “You beat him up?”
“Well, it was just me and Iruka-sensei,” said Naruto.
“You mean you actually believed when Mizuki said doing all that would pass you?” she asked, completely shocked.
He just smirked and nodded. “Even used my original technique to get past the Hokage as well.”
Original technique? “Okay then, show me.”
As Sasuke approached the missing cat—as well as trying not to notice the fact it was trying to pick a fight with a bug large enough to eat it, he heard a loud cry which scared the bug away.
“ECCHI NO BAKA!”
He paused as he saw an orange blur rise into the air, before it dive-bombed into the group, creating a large explosion … and knocking out the suicidal cat.
Blinking a bit, the Uchiha just shrugged. “Whatever,” he said as he gathered the unconscious cat and left. He didn’t want to know. It was probably safer for his equipment that way.
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(Posted Wed, 09 Apr 2008 04:55)
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