Reassured, he pressed some pages from one book into the cover of another book and let the glue firm.
Pranks, the really good ones, were all about preparation. Nobody understood him in that regard, it was only when he was BORED that the temptation to pull the prank overcame his reluctance to screw things up with the people around him more. After all, Hinata had NOT taken it well when he'd experimented with one of his seal-traps and accidently turned her hair purple. Even if she HAD been cute that way. Apparently she'd caught all sorts of crap from her father on it too, which was why that very father had pretty much forbade Hinata to come anywhere near him except on missions. Old stick-in-the-mud. No sense of humor or adventure.
He'd had a crush on Sakura for awhile, but after he'd suggested she make Sasuke jealous by going out with him - and she'd picked up her desk and hit him with it three times, he'd cooled a lot towards her.
So now, he'd have this little prank ready but wouldn't use it unless he got really bored. It was 'just in case' after all.
"-and so you have to get one of these bells off my belt," said Kakashi.
"What bells?" asked Sakura.
"These..." Kakashi's hand swept through the area where the bells had been. He immediately noted the LACK of said bells.
Sasuke, Sakura, and Kakashi all gave a completely deadpan look at the blonde in their midst.
"What?" asked Naruto.
"The bells?" asked Kakashi, putting a hand out.
"Yeesh, okay, okay," said Naruto, opening a pouch and beginning to pull things out. "It's your fault, Kakashi-sensei. I mean I was here on time and there you were - LATE. I got bored."
"Hnn," indicated Sasuke, switching his glare from Naruto to Kakashi. Didn't the guy know how Naruto got when he was bored. Bored Naruto = Very Bad Things Happening. Simple enough that you didn't have to be 'rookie of the year' for it to register.
Kakashi blinked. "My book? My scrolls? My wallet?!"
"AGH!" said Sakura, pouncing. "Whatareyoudoingwiththat? Howdyougetit?! Don'tlookatit!"
Sasuke blinked as he'd been glaring at Kakashi and hadn't seen it. Judging from Sakura's blush and guilty look, he was hoping it was not something relating to him, but he was pretty sure it WAS.
"Anyway," began Kakashi, going over the remainder of the test.
"Waitaminute, you WANT me to steal something?" asked Naruto, his eyes lighting up.
"Okay, NOW I'm a little concerned," said Kakashi.
"Huh," said Sasuke, frowning and putting a few kunai up his armbands.
"You may start," said Kakashi, blurring as he performed a shunshin manuever.
Naruto walked over to the posts, sat down and waited.
"Aren't you going to even try?" asked Kakashi, appearing out of nowhere behind him.
"It's not fair to my team, is it?" asked Naruto, taking out a blank scroll and an ink pot.
"Why not?" asked Kakashi, curious as to the blonde nin's reasoning.
"Sakura's good at traps, but she tends to attack straightforward," said Naruto. "If she'd ever use some of my fuuinjutsu in her traps, she could be awesome. Sasuke's really good with kunai and shuriken, has a fireball technique, and is one of the best in class at taijutsu. If I go in and steal the bells, they can't show off their strengths. This is kinda like a display of what we can do outside the Academy, right?"
"In part, perhaps," sort-of admitted Kakashi.
"Now, if it were up to ME," said Naruto, going to a bare patch of ground and scribbling something out with a stick. "I'd have Sasuke come in, act as a distraction with his taijutsu. Manuever you into position so that Sakura would use a trap. Preferably using one of my fuuinjutsu that would wrap you in chains. At which point we steal the bells, and then Sakura and Sasuke take them."
"Oh, and you go back to the Academy?" asked Kakashi.
"No, if I fail here - my godfather has offered to take me on a training journey," said Naruto with a shrug. "He's a total perv, but he knows fuuinjutsu. Maybe I could even sign the Toad Summoning Contract. That'd be cool."
"That would be about that graduation from 'wiseass' to 'badass' you were talking about yesterday?" asked Kakashi, ducking under a stream of kunai and casually snagging a couple that he returned to the same bush that had thrown them.
"Yeah, pretty much," agreed Naruto. "You don't know a whole lot about seals do you?"
"Some," admitted Kakashi.
"I'm trying to come up with a different sort of explosive tag," said Naruto. "Except instead of exploding, when it goes off it forms a block of ice. I'm having trouble configuring the Water and Wind arrays to work together to form Ice. It should be possible."
"Oh, well, I'll let you get to that, back in a moment," said a bemused Kakashi.
Naruto continued sketching sections out in the dirt, pausing and considering them when he heard Sakura scream. Then continuing again when he heard Sasuke do his fireball attack.
"NARUTO!" called out Sasuke, limping up to the blonde.
"He's a jonin you know," said Naruto, erasing a line and writing a new one. "He's also supposedly really fantastic at that stuff."
"He kept trying to read a book while fighting me!" said Sasuke, affronted by that.
"Wait for it," said Naruto. "By the way, here."
"The bells?!" asked Sasuke. "When?"
"I gave him back two leaves that I used a henge on to make them look like bells," said Naruto. "If he'd really looked them over, he'd have noticed."
"What are we waiting for?" asked Sasuke, twitching a little.
"He should be opening his book and reading it about..." Naruto paused.
"AIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
"Someone switched his book with a doctored copy of the same book. Where the spot he'd been reading from yesterday in his book was switched with some of Sakura's yaoi manga," said Naruto, making another couple of squiggles in the dirt.
"That's sneaky, dirty, underhanded," said Sasuke, listening for a moment to the sound of a book being shredded and broken sobbing. "Evil."
"Yeah?" asked Naruto.
"Not bad," said Sasuke, with a little nod of approval. Find a weak point and strike hard. Good ninja tactics.
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(Posted Mon, 14 Mar 2011 15:38)
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