She was still coming up with nothing that explained it. Yes, he was an idiot. Yes, he was loud. Yes, he had weird marks on his face. Yes, he had a complete lack of fashion sense.
None of that quite fit the reactions. She was still missing something, but she had come to a conclusion in the past two weeks since discovering that Sasuke was actually friends with Naruto.
It wasn't, as far as Sakura could determine, actually Naruto's fault.
She didn't want to encourage Naruto, as he was still mainly annoying, but maybe she could be a little nicer to him.
Sasuke was as awesome as ever. More so actually, since he was able to bring Naruto up from bottom-of-the-barrel status. Naruto showing so much more skill in their private sparring was obviously Sasuke's influence.
Sakura had decided though. Naruto wasn't annoying her with asking her out anymore. Watching them fight had caused her to consider how her own skills were.
Quite frankly, they were found wanting.
She was smarter than Naruto, obviously. She consistently rated highest among the class when it came to test scores in anything academics. However, she also knew that when a ninja was rated the three scores looked at the most by prospective clients were Taijutsu, Ninjutsu, and Genjutsu. Naruto and Sasuke excelled at Taijutsu and their Ninjutsu wasn't bad either. Though Naruto couldn't do a simple bunshin worth a darn, he was good at henge and kawarimi.
She had better memory and chakra control than either, and she thought she could do well at Genjutsu. The problem was that the only technique she'd been able to scrounge out of the books available to her at her current level was the basic Genjutsu Kai or Release technique.
Moving towards the clearing, Sakura paused on hearing an unfamiliar voice.
When she got there, she was surprised to see Sasuke and Naruto attacking an old man. More surprising, the old man was neatly avoiding both attackers and had his hands in his pockets.
Naruto nearly caught the old man with a weird looking uppercut, while Sasuke had occupied his attention with a legsweep.
"Better," said the old man. "But that isn't saying much. Maybe the little girl there could challenge me more than this."
Sakura grimaced. She'd have preferred to watch from the shadows and wait for an attack of opportunity from surprise. Having lost the surprise, she didn't see where she could do much - but it was time to try.
Sakura rushed forward into the fight.
Five minutes later, she was regretting it. Especially as she'd somehow ended up underneath Sasuke who was underneath Naruto.
Waitaminute, that meant that covering her with his body warming her own was Sasuke?!
Suddenly this wasn't quite as bad as she'd thought it had been.
"Get your elbow out of my ear, dobe," complained Sasuke.
"As soon as I can move," grunted Naruto. "That last hit did... something."
"Kids these days," said the old man, sitting atop Naruto. "Still, you did actually make me use one of my hands. That's fairly impressive for punk kids with hardly any real training in taijutsu."
"Can you get off?" asked Naruto of the old man sitting full-lotus on his chest.
"No," said the old man. "I just got comfortable."
"What kind of taijutsu were you using?" asked Sasuke.
"My name is Gouken," said the old man. "The art you saw me practicing when you decided to dispute my use of your training ground, and the style I used to grind you into the dirt is my own style. I'm still debating whether or not to teach you any of it."
"Teach us?" asked Naruto.
"Yes, my previous student has proven to have issues," said Gouken. "Perhaps one of you three will be able to reach the higher end of the Art."
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(Posted Tue, 26 Jul 2011 21:35)
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