Naruto and Sakura went to Naruto’s apartment and Sakura looked around. The place looked run down and there was a roughly patched hole in the roof.
“You live here?” Sakura asked in a bit of shock.
“It is the only place that would have me, since I am the only one here,” Naruto replied. “It’s not that bad. I just have to check every day to make sure the boards don’t let in any rain and get the barrels from the roof after they get filled with rainwater.”
Sakura walked into the kitchen and turned on one of the taps.
“This place doesn’t have running water. There’s a cup that you can use in the sink and you can get some water out of one of the barrels near the sink,” Naruto said.
“How do you get cleaned up or clean your clothes?” Sakura asked, flinching a bit, as she found a battered tin cup and looked at the two barrels inside the kitchen.
“There’s a river outside the village. It’s kind of cold during the winter,” Naruto replied with a shrug.
Sakura put the cup back down and shook her head.
“Well, I came here to practice,” Sakura stated, doing her best not to think of Naruto’s lifestyle.
Naruto nodded and pulled out the box and found the Falling Night scroll and handed it to Sakura to read. He then pulled out two scrolls. One was marked ‘Blazing Sun’ and the other ‘Glorious Rainbow’. Sakura took a bit of time, but she was able to do the first technique of Falling Night and dropped a veil of darkness around her.
“That would be good for blind-fighting exercises,” Naruto commented.
The darkness around Sakura faded away, and she looked at her teammate with a strange expression on her face.
“What are you talking about?”
“That darkness you surrounded yourself with.”
“I created the darkness?” Sakura asked in shock.
“Yes. You didn’t know.”
“Apparently, I could see clearly through that darkness. Although, everything was a bit hazy as if there was an extremely light fog out.”
“Must be some special trick to that art form,” Naruto mumbled and then shook his head. “I don’t think it would work all that well on me, since I’ve been practicing blind-fighting for two years now.”
“No, but since you have been doing that, it might make it valuable for when we’re teamed up on a mission,” Sakura countered.
“Maybe,” Naruto replied, as he read through one of the scrolls he had.
The two of them didn’t say too much more, as they went through the techniques from the scrolls they had. Sakura’s natural intelligence was able to grasp the theories behind the various darkness creation techniques. Since the Shaolin techniques were based on the theory anyone could do them if they practiced, there were no bloodline limits blocking either of them from learning the techniques. Before the sun hit the horizon, Sakura stood up and nodded to Naruto.
“I have to get home. I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” Sakura said.
“Right. See you tomorrow, Sakura,” Naruto said.
Sakura left the apartment and headed home. Before the apartment was out of sight, she turned around and gave a sad stare at Naruto’s home.
“How can anyone live like that?” Sakura whispered to herself.
She quickly rubbed her eyes and headed home.
The next morning, Sakura woke before the sun and quickly headed to Naruto’s home with some food in a basket. She quickly headed up to the apartment where Naruto lived and knocked on the door. The door opened up and a groggy Naruto was on the other side.
“Sakura? What are you doing here? The meeting with Kakashi isn‘t..."
“It’s two hours from now,” Sakura interjected. “I brought some food to eat.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
Sakura looked away. “I never knew you lived like this. Doesn’t anyone know?”
“The Hokage knows, but he can’t do anything, since there is some problem with the council. No one wants me around,” Naruto said. “Since this building is abandoned, I’m allowed to live here.”
Sakura set the basket down, opened it up, and handed Naruto a large sandwich.
“That’s horrible.”
Naruto shrugged. “I have the entire building to myself. It’s better than being kicked out of Konoha or killed.”
“You can’t believe that anyone would want to do that,” Sakura said in denial, as she shook her head.
“Of course I can. I also know why,” Naruto stated, and started eating his sandwich.
Sakura took a sandwich for herself and started eating, as she thought of the village pariah.
“Why are you treated like this?” Sakura asked.
Naruto shook his head. “I told you before, If I told you, you would want to kill me or run away from me utterly terrified.”
Sakura could feel the certainty in Naruto’s voice on what her actions would be, if she found out why the Naruto was treated this way. The two finished the basket of food off about thirty minutes before they needed to meet Kakashi and Sasuke. The two made their way to the training ground and met up with Sasuke. A few minutes later Kakashi showed up. Naruto and Sakura glanced at each other and nodded.
“That was an interesting test you had us take,” Sakura said.
“Oh?” Kakashi asked, keeping the confusion out of his voice.
“Yes. You told us not to eat breakfast if we were fans of throwing up,” Naruto replied. “What we figured out was that it was a choice of either throwing up once today or being hungry for the entire day. We would have told Sasuke, but he had left before we figured it out. He probably figured it out on his own anyway.”
Sasuke did his best to hide his embarrassment at being upstaged by the Dead Last and an average student. Kakashi drummed the fingers of his right hand on the side of his leg.
“Right. That is one way of seeing underneath the underneath,” Kakashi said slowly. “It was quite clever of you to read my words that way. Okay. You’ve all passed. Tomorrow, we will be taking on some D ranked missions. Congratulations. Meet me here tomorrow at the same time.”
The three members of Team Seven left and Kakashi was sorely tempted to ram his head into a tree.
“That was not the test I had in mind. I can’t let them know they’ve gotten me twice.”
Over the next few days, Team Seven did several D ranked missions. Sakura and Naruto took time each day to learn from the Shaolin scrolls and practice. Kakashi took Sasuke aside and taught him personally, but really didn’t pay much attention to the other two members of Team Seven. Although, Kakashi didn’t pay attention to the way things were going, Naruto and Sakura did. The two of them watched one the Uchiha’s training sessions one day.
“I would ask why Kakashi doesn’t train one of us, but I have the feeling I already know the answer,” Sakura muttered.
“Everyone loves Sasuke,” Naruto stated.
“Not me. Not anymore,” Sakura mumbled.
“There is going to be a shortage of people who can take C rank missions tomorrow. Want to head to Nami no Kuni?” Naruto asked.
“How do you know that?” Sakura asked.
Naruto made a shadow puppet of a bird flapping its wings on a wall. “A little bird told me.”
“Uh-huh. You’re not going to tell me, are you?” Sakura responded with a smile.
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(Posted Wed, 09 Apr 2008 03:09)
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