Okay, the last one was an indication of how much things had changed recently.
"How can I say this, but my first impression is - I don't like you guys," said the team jonin.
The floating boy fell those two feet to land on his butt. "Okay. You late all the time?"
"Oh, hardly ever," said Kakashi. "C'mon. Let's go to the roof where we can at least get some fresh air."
"Well, let's start with introductions," said Kakashi. "Just give me likes and dislikes, hopes for the future and such, stuff like that."
"You want to go first?" asked Naruto.
"Yeah, you're kind of suspicious," said Sakura, who then made a face for agreeing with Naruto of all people.
"Well, I'm Kakashi Hatake, I have no desire to tell you what my likes and dislikes are. My hobbies are too many to mention."
"So all we got is a name," complained Sakura.
"Let's see, starting with the right," prodded Kakashi.
"Naruto Uzumaki. My likes are -" Naruto paused.
"Quiet little goth girls who sit in the back of the class," teased Sakura, needling the boy who'd had a crush on her for so long.
Naruto looked at her in such a way that Sakura felt intimidated, just a little.
"Yeah," said Naruto after a couple of moments of that silent appraisal. "I want to be Hokage eventually, and be able to protect everyone precious to me. I like ramen. I want to get control over these fire and wind jutsu abilities."
Kakashi nodded. Based on his old records, he would have expected some answer dealing with getting attention. Boy had changed.
"I am Sasuke Uchiha," said the brooding boy. "I have many things I dislike. I don't have anything I particularly like. As for dreams, I have none. I have an ambition however, which is the resurrection of my clan and the slaying of a certain man."
"I'm Sakura Haruno," said the pinkette. "The thing, I mean the person I like is -"
"She likes Sasuke," said Naruto. "She wants to resurrect the Uchiha clan too."
"NARUTO!" yelled a suddenly angry Sakura.
"Hmph, payback is important," said Sasuke with a smirk, scoring one for Naruto however annoying this was..
"What I dislike is Naruto!" said Sakura.
Getting up early the next day was a chore, but he felt it necessary.
He knew where she was, that she was heading to where her team was, and that Kakashi-sensei would be late. He'd gotten that much off of him when he'd asked about being late yesterday. Late was almost Kakashi Hatake's modus operandi.
"Na-Naruto-kun?"
"Hinata," said Naruto, nodding. "Since we're on different teams and since we probably won't see each other that often. I want you to have something."
"Eh?" asked Hinata, managing to look stricken.
"Here," said Naruto, holding out his hand.
When she finally managed to put her hand underneath his, she wasn't expecting what dropped into her hand. "A key?"
Naruto had already gone through this, trying to find just the right words and rehearse the possible endings. "Look. I kinda know about some of the things at your home."
"Eh?!" repeated Hinata, with even more feeling.
"If you need a place to hang out, or just want to leave a message for me, that's my spare apartment key," said Naruto. "Hey, if I ever get some plants and such, you can come by and water 'em, right?"
"Naruto-kun," said Hinata, staring at the key.
Naruto couldn't help but wince at some of the images he was getting from Hinata, so strong were those memories. All the times she'd gotten hurt and some of the things that had been said to her. All the times when she'd tried to find a place to hide just to deal with things.
"H-hai," said Hinata, closing her hand around the keychain with the little frog dangling from it. Her grip immediately went to white knuckled tightness.
"I hope I see you between missions," said Naruto as Hinata bolted within a cloud of confusing emotions.
"It's past ten," pointed out Naruto, sitting back and watching the clouds. He was beginning to see why Shikamaru did this. It was actually fairly calming. "So we have to grab those two bells off of you before noon. Against a jonin known as the Copy Cat Ninja or Sharingan Kakashi?"
"You did research?" asked Sakura, acting as if this was a sign of the apocalypse.
"I asked around," said Naruto, not mentioning he'd asked the people over at Ichiraku.
"'Sharingan'?" asked Sasuke, throwing aside his brooding to manage surprised.
"Right, and since I've got two bells here," Kakashi punctuated that by dingling his bells, "one of you gets tied to a post and goes without lunch. Since the person without a bell fails, one of you will definitely go back to the Academy."
"I thought this was supposed to be a team," pointed out Naruto reasonably.
"If you want, you can use shuriken and kunai. You won't be able to beat me without killing intent." Kakashi's lone visible eye looked over the three kids.
"Fine," said Naruto, going off to one of the posts. "Let me know when it's my turn."
"What? You're not even going to try?" asked Sakura in disbelief.
"You haven't been listening to me, have you?" asked Naruto as he went over to the post. "Whatever's going on with the fire and wind techniques? I can't completely control it. Things keep exploding into fireballs. If I go all out I may end up killing someone for real. So, make your tries, and if you can't I'll try then. It's safer for everyone else if I hold back."
"Oh?" asked Kakashi. "Anyone else want to fail?"
"Ready, Sasuke?" asked Sakura.
"Stay out of my way," responded the Uchiha.
"Start!" said Kakashi.
Naruto opened up the book and started flipping through it. "Huh? What the heck is this?"
Somewhere nearby, Sakura screamed as if she'd seen some private vision of hell.
"Damnit! He faked an opening to check my position!"
"'slaked'? What's that mean?" asked Naruto, flipping to another page.
"Uhm, minors really aren't supposed to be reading that series," said Kakashi as he landed nearby.
"I was curious as to what you had in your pouch there," said Naruto, flipping to another page. "Is this even physically possible?"
"What?" Kakashi felt around in his pocket. "How'd you get that?"
Naruto shrugged. "You done with those two yet?"
"They're your team-mates, you should support them," said Kakashi.
"No they're not," said Naruto. "If Sasuke or Sakura wanted to be on a team with me - that'd be fine. They're not though, and I certainly don't want either of them to die because I'm having to fight a jonin. When they're done, I'll give it a try if you insist on doing this."
"What happened to becoming Hokage?" asked Kakashi, idly plucking shuriken out of the air as someone launched them from nearby brush.
"I want to be Hokage, but not at the cost of their lives," said Naruto. "When I can do ninjutsu and not have stuff blow up or catch fire, that'll be good. From what I see of you so far, my taijutsu isn't gonna even make you raise a sweat."
"What would you do," asked Kakashi as he plucked the book from Naruto's hands, "if I was an ENEMY jonin."
Naruto considered that. "First I'd try to get Sakura and Sasuke to back off. Then I'd see exactly how much fire I could bring to bear."
"So you're saying the same thing you were saying earlier, that you're not attacking me because you might hurt your team, even though you say you're not on a team?" asked Kakashi.
"Yeah, pretty much," said Naruto, putting his hands behind his head.
Kakashi leapt back now that Sasuke was charging forward. "Well, then, maybe a genjutsu to entertain you while I take care of Sasuke here."
"A what?" asked Naruto.
"Na-naruto?" said a familiar voice.
"Hinata?" asked Naruto, sitting up and putting something jingly into his belt-pouch. "How did your training go?"
Hinata dropped out of the bushes, kunai and shuriken sticking out of almost every part of her body. "help me."
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:34)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.