At the ninja school, Iruka flipped through the papers and smirked at what he set the teams as.
"Greetings students. I will be breaking you into three-man teams. Since there are twenty-seven of you, there will be nine new rookie teams," Iruka stated.
Sasuke frowned at that announcement, and mumbled to himself.
"It sounds like two too many to me."
"Team Seven will consist of Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno, and Sasuke Uchiha."
Sakura grimaced a bit at her team's composition. Only Ino picked up that Sakura grimaced when Sasuke was mentioned.
'Why would forehead girl not want to be partnered with the Uchiha?' Ino thought in confusion.
After the teams were fully formed, Ino tracked down Sakura. She was talking to Naruto about something.
"All right forehead girl, what's going on?" Ino demanded.
Sakura looked at her one time friend and shook her head in sadness. "I can't tell you. The Hokage told me to keep it secret."
"You don't even know what I was referring to."
"Sasuke Uchiha," Sakura retorted. "As I said, the Hokage told me not to tell anyone. I'm not going after him anymore."
Ino blinked in shock.
"If you know what I know, you wouldn't either," Sakura replied sadly. "Can we be friends again? That mess with Sasuke cost us that."
Ino shook her head in confusion. "If you're not going after Sasuke, which I can't figure why you wouldn't, I guess so."
"Thanks," Sakura replied with a smile.
"Excuse me Sakura, why aren't you chasing after Sasuke?" Naruto asked.
"Not here. You already know the reason, even if you haven't figured it out," Sakura replied with pain on her face.
Naruto shook his head and thought a bit. He snapped his fingers, as he recalled something.
"It was that other scroll wasn't...."
Sakura quickly covered Naruto's mouth with her hands. "The Hokage has made that a high level secret. You can't say anything."
"Mrph mybmle mrk."
Sakura removed her hands and shook her head.
"All right. That scroll was kind of silly," Naruto said, as he rubbed the back of his head.
"Don't say anything. I wanted to talk to you about the Kage Bunshin at any rate."
Sakura quickly told Naruto on the information gathering abilities of the shadow clone technique, but left out the exploding clone version. Ino shook her head at Sakura's antics, although she was left wondering what scroll that Naruto and Sakura were talking about and what was on it and watched the two members of Team Seven leave.
"Naruto? You said you hid your real strength," Sakura stated in the way of a question.
"Yes. I chose to graduate as Dead Last, in case someone broke into the records department," Naruto replied with an enthusiastic nod. "I will always be underestimated."
"Hide your true strength at all times, unless you are fighting for your life," Sakura muttered, as she shook her head.
"I guess so," Naruto replied in a bit of confusion.
Sakura shook her head. "I have no abilities of note."
"Not true. When you are angry, you hit really, really hard," Naruto countered.
"That's just my anger," Sakura retorted in irritation.
"I've seen other people as angry as you at times, but somehow when you are angry, you are incredibly strong," Naruto said and hunched down in fear.
"I'm not going to hit you. A chakra based ability that increases my strength?" Sakura said, as she tapped her chin in thought. "It's something that I can work with."
"You usually have just brushed me off before and...," Naruto stammered.
"That mess with Mizuki opened my eyes in more ways than one," Sakura replied. "I always thought you weren't much of a ninja, but you saw through Mizuki and set your own trap to catch him."
"Er."
"I just need some technique that will stop me being hypnotized," Sakura muttered.
"Hypnotized?"
'She's thinking about that human breeding scroll, brat. Teach her to use the Falling Night style.'
Naruto frowned at the thought he knew wasn't his own. He quickly brought out the Shaolin scroll box and opened it up.
"Naruto? What is that?"
"A person gave me these scrolls to protect and teach only those that I can trust," Naruto replied softly, as dug through the scrolls and glanced around.
He pulled a scroll that had the kanji for fall and night on it and handed to Sakura. Sakura unrolled the scroll and looked in shock at it.
"Memorize the first technique and hand it back," Naruto whispered.
Sakura quickly did so and watched as Naruto hid the box on his person.
"Sorry I can't let you have the scroll for longer periods of time, but I'm being very careful with this box," Naruto whispered.
"I understand. That's one of the S rank secrets you hold," Sakura whispered back.
The two kids headed toward a classroom and were joined by Sasuke. The three of them waited for quite a bit. Naruto and Sakura mentally went through the various techniques they knew, while Sasuke looked bored.
'He looks handsome and...' Sakura thought
At this point her inner voice countered that. 'It's that stupid Sharingan that makes him attractive.'
Sakura shook her head and gritted her teeth, as she forced herself to look out a window.
"Hey idiot, what are you doing?" Sasuke called out.
"Just setting up something for our teacher making us wait this long," Naruto said, as he placed a chalkboard eraser between the doorframe and door.
"Naruto, don't bother. He'll probably walk through that door and take it, just to make us underestimate him," Sakura said.
"Well..."
Sasuke shook his head and glared at a wall. Naruto looked at the eraser and then at Sakura. He decided to not remove the eraser and see what would happen. The door opened and a person with most of his face and one eye covered walked through the door. The eraser dropped on his head in a cloud of chalk dust.
Sakura glanced at Naruto. "See?"
"I guess you're right. He is trying to make us underestimate him," Naruto replied. "But, it was still funny."
Sasuke looked at the ceiling and shook his head in annoyance. The man reached down and picked up the eraser and shook his head.
"Right. I am Kakashi Hatake. Using a simple childish trick to test my skills or my motivations?" The man said, as he put the eraser back on the tray underneath the chalkboard. "My first impression of you three is that I hate you."
The three children waited a bit.
"Come with me," Kakashi said.
The trio followed the man to a place in Konoha and sat down.
"Each of you will tell me what you like the most, hate the most, and what your dream is," Kakashi said.
"I'm not sure what I like the most. I hate is my emotions being manipulated. I want to be respected."
"What I like and hate the most, I will not say, since they are S-rank secrets," Naruto replied. "My main dream is to become the Hokage, but I have a secondary one if that's not possible."
Kakashi gave a pointed look at Naruto. "I have a feeling I know what you hate the most and why, but you are right about that being an S-rank secret."
Sasuke shook his head. "I will not say what I hate the most, since I dislike everything. Dream is just a word, so I have none. There is a person that I have sworn to kill."
Sakura looked away and sighed, while Naruto stared at Sasuke in shock. After giving a bit of a speech, Kakashi pulled out three sheets of paper.
"Tomorrow, we will have a test of your skills. Do not eat breakfast, if you are not a fan of throwing up," Kakashi said. "This will be like a standard mission."
With that, Kakashi vanished in a cloud of smoke. Sasuke read the paper and gave a snort.
"This should be easy enough for me," Sasuke muttered.
"He might have said no breakfast, but he didn't say anything about a very large supper," Naruto stated.
"Naruto?" Sakura asked.
"What?"
"The box. I might need to practice a bit and...." Sakura mumbled.
"Well, I guess we can practice at my home. It's not that large though," Naruto said.
"Right. You were also correct about what Kakashi said. We'll just fill our stomachs until we can't fit in anymore before going to bed," Sakura stated.
"Actually he said, 'don't eat breakfast if you are not a fan of throwing up.' Heck with it, I'm going to eat breakfast tomorrow morning," Naruto stated.
Sakura blinked and then nodded. "I might not like throwing up either, but that's better than hunger pangs."
See other episodes by Disruptor
(Posted Mon, 07 Apr 2008 07:15)
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