Sakura glanced over at Sasuke, making a couple of quick flickers of finger gestures. Sasuke raised an eyebrow and made a couple back at her.
"Don't worry, Naruto!" said Sakura, making a fist-up gesture. "I'll prove to you I'm a serious kunoichi!"
"I, uhm, right," said Naruto.
"Hmph," said Sasuke, coming to a different conclusion apparently and smirking a bit. "About time you noticed."
"Huh?" asked the thoroughly lost Naruto.
"'Notice'?" asked Sakura, glancing at Sasuke with a puzzled expression. She whipped around a moment later to look at Naruto again and this time blushed a very new shade of crimson at least two shades brighter than her vest. A smile appeared, tentative at first before going into a full grin.
"Ne ne," said Kakashi. "It's all well and good that Naruto finally noticed that his training partner from the Academy is actually a girl. There's my test still unless all three of you want to go back to the Academy."
Naruto was REALLY wondering what was going on now. "I wish I had a clue about that actually."
"You may begin," said Kakashi.
"KYAAAAAA!" yelled Sakura, rushing in and unleashing a combination of savage kicks and punches that Kakashi blocked or deflected.
Sasuke disappeared into the bushes. Naruto decided to try something a bit different. "Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu! Multiple Explosive Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
Sensing a momentary distraction, Sakura swept in with a legsweep. A log hit the ground a moment later.
"DAMN it! A substitution," said Sakura, though it took a bit longer with her trying to catch her breath in between words. "I didn't see any handsigns either. He must really be an elite jonin!"
"Yeah, any clue where he actually is?" asked Naruto.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
Sakura winced at Sasuke's scream. "That sounds like one."
"You guys," said Naruto, addressing his clones. "Scatter and search for Kakashi-sensei! Signal when you find him!"
Running towards the location, they found Sasuke curled up in a little ball making whimpering noises.
"Okay, that's bad," said Sakura. "Might be a genjutsu. You want to dispel it?"
"Uhm," said Naruto, taking in that Sakura thought he COULD dispel it and not wanting to do ANYTHING to look bad in front of her right now. "I-"
"Oh crap," said Sakura, straightening up. "Maybe it's me! I'm in a genjutsu aren't I?"
"Eh?" asked Naruto.
"I should've known. Too good to be true you'd look at me like that," mumbled Sakura, taking a kunai out and jabbing the point into her thigh.
"Uhm, Sakura. I'm pretty sure it's Sasuke who is caught," said Naruto. "And, uhm, you're bleeding pretty badly."
"SHIMATA!" called out Sakura, hanging her head, then taking a deep breath. "Okay. I'll break Sasuke out and hopefully his hemophobia won't be triggered."
"His wha - err - yeah. I'm going to check on my -"
BOOM!
"-clones."
"They found him," stated Sakura. "That's awesome, Naruto!"
"Uh, yeah," said Naruto, still completely off-balance.
"Shadow clones. Explosive shadow clones." Kakashi peered out at the masses of clones scurrying about. Which was which?
"Delivery for Mister Kakashi Hatake!" called out a courier carrying a large package. "Mister Kakashi Hatake? Funny. They told me he'd be over here."
"Nice try," said Kakashi, throwing a kunai through the shadow clone and causing the explosive package to drop to the ground and explode in a rather large fireball. "That was an awfully big explosion. Did he figure out how to bundle together more than one explosive shadow clone? That's mildly concerning."
"Meow," said a cat, sauntering towards him with a 'I'm a cat so I go wherever I want' attitude. "Mew."
Kakashi grimaced, throwing another kunai and causing the cat to explode. With a smaller fireball, so not a stacked explosive clone but still worth not wanting to be there when it went off. "I guess I need to go put down a genin or I'll never get any reading done."
"Okay, he's coming after us now," said Naruto.
"How do you?" asked Sakura, who then struck her forehead with the palm of her hand. "Right. I remember that now. When one of your shadow clones dispels you remember everything it's experienced."
"It... yeah," said Naruto. Sakura considered him competent somehow and he really really REALLY liked that. Trying to keep from asking her what the hell was going on though - that was getting really hard.
"Handy, but I don't know that I'd like to experience dying that often," said Sasuke, shuddering a bit.
"Err, yeah. That too," said Naruto, trying to ignore whatever was wrong with Sasuke. He LOOKED the same. Mostly. Actually he seemed a little shorter and more delicate-looking somehow.
"Okay, let's go with - LOOK OUT!" Sakura leapt away as Kakashi suddenly appeared right next to them.
"Good night, Naruto," said Kakashi, fingers stabbing out.
Everything went dark.
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(Posted Thu, 28 Aug 2014 00:34)
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