“I still don’t understand why we were picked for this,” Kiba said loudly. “Wouldn’t that asshole cousin of yours and his team be a better choice for beating new craters into missing-nin face?”
Hinata ducked her head. “Sorry,” she said softly.
“Eh?” Kiba asked, surprised. “About what?”
“Arf arf!”
“What do you mean ‘insulted her?’ How’s I do that?”
Akamaru sighed and considered nipping his idiot partner. Humans.
Kurenai smiled slightly. There were high spirits if there was banter. “Kiba, report!”
“Team seven’s scent picks up on the far bank,” Kiba said easily. “It reeks of Naruto. I’m not sure how or why, but Hinata’s boyfriend-”
“EEP!”
“-spread his scent all over the place. It might have been those clones.”
Shino deftly caught Hinata as the poor girl slipped from the branch she was jumping from. “You should be more careful,” he said blandly.
Hinata savagely got her blush under control and failed miserably. “Th-thank you.”
Kakashi really shouldn’t be this easily surprised. But there was Naruto, standing upside down on a branch well overhead. “Naruto! You can climb that high?”
Naruto gave his classic foxy grin. “Heehee. This is nothing, didn’t I say that!?”
At which point his feet lost contact with the branch.
Kakashi stared, wondering how much paperwork this death was going to cost him.
Sakura freaked.
Sasuke jumped out of the shadows and caught Naruto’s ankle.
Naruto turned out to be waaaaay too heavy and slipped through Sasuke’s fingers.
THUD.
“Awww, now I’m all dirty,” Naruto whined.
Kakashi covered his shock by looking at the sky. The backup should be here soon; the sun was hanging low in the west.
Kiba sniffed. “That’s them. Scent’s too strong for it to be a trail.
Kurenai nodded. “Hinata?”
“Byakugan! …I see them. Sasuke is demonstrating tree climbing. Naruto is crawling out of a Naruto-shaped hole in the ground.” She briefly considered filling the hole with plaster and using it as a mold to make herself a Naruto statue for her shrine. Not that she had a shrine. Mostly. Ack, blushing! Must not let the secret of the shrine get out! “Um, Sakura is hitting Naruto with a stick.”
Kurenai assumed Hinata was thinking about her Naruto shrine in the forest. It was almost impressive how many locks of hair she had assembled without anyone else finding out. It was also creepy. Girl could spot loose hairs a mile off and tracked them down like Anko after young innocent uncorrupted genin.
…
Okay, in the grand scheme of things, a Naruto shrine isn’t THAT creepy.
Shino looked to Hinata. “They are still learning tree climbing?”
“Not all ninja learn control from a young age, Shino,” Kurenai chided. Shino and Hinata both came from families with hijutsu that demanded intense chakra control. Teaching them treewalking had taken a mere day. Kiba took a bit longer, but Kurenai had made it a priority to get them all up to her standard for control, so that was well into the past. “Kakashi isn’t the most subtle ninja in Konoha. It’s no surprise he’s taken this long to reach this kind of training.”
Team 8 digested that thought in a moment of silence.
Kakashi blinked slowly when team 8 leaped into view. He opened his book and leaned against a tree.
“You’re not fooling anyone, Kakashi,” Kurenai chided, walking over to him.
Kakashi didn’t look up. “Hnn?”
Kiba looked to Hinata. “I wonder when he started talking like Sasuke?”
Hinata smiled weakly at the joke.
Sakura looked around. “That’s it? Kakashi-sensei, why didn’t you ask for a stronger team?”
“Hey!” Kiba yelled.
Sasuke jumped down from his tree. “You think you can fight anyone that can take me?”
“Hell yeah!” Kiba boasted.
Sasuke snorted.
“It was either us or Guy,” Kurenai said with amusement.
“The Hokage made the right choice,” Kakashi declared.
“Where’s Hinata?”
Kurenai smirked.
Naruto yelled and ran up the tree, almost to the second branch before he felt his chakra fail. He slashed the trunk with his kunai and jumped off down to the first branch. “How was that?” he asked.
Standing next to him, Hinata dropped her byakugan and twiddled her fingers. “Ano…I’m not sure?”
“Eh?” Naruto asked. “You said you learned this ages ago.”
“Y-yeah…you climbed pretty good for only starting today…but…” Blush, twiddle twiddle.
“But?”
“Well…something’s strange about your chakra coils.”
“Strange?” Naruto asked calmly. Between his prisoner and his transformation, that wasn’t a surprise.
Hinata made a sign. “Byakugan. Uhhh…you have about twice as many chakra points as you should. And right here,” she points at Naruto, “there’s a bundle of chakra that…I don’t know what that is.”
Naruto considered. “That’s interesting. And you can’t pick up any hints about why?”
Hinata twiddled and blushed. “It’ll sound stupid.”
Naruto blinked. “You’re not stupid.”
Hinata stammered for a moment. “Ii-i-i-i…okay. Well, your chakra looks…scaly.”
Naruto blinked. “Scaly?”
“Not in a bad way!” Hinata said quickly. “It’s like…like…” Like the chakra of a boy I want to hug and snuggle and cuddle until the sun goes out and the world turns to dust. Hinata’s blush rose to mega levels and she passed out.
“Hinata!” Naruto yelped, lunging after her. Apparently fainting in a tree means falling to the ground. Gravity is a harsh mistress.
THUD.
Kakashi looked up from his book. “Naruto fell again.”
“I hope he doesn’t leave too many holes in the ground,” Kurenai muttered. “Hey, stop reading your porn and listen! This is serious!”
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(Posted Fri, 27 May 2011 22:57)
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