Thoughts and flames welcome, but thoughtless flames will be used to roast marshmallows for smores and cuddle next to. I own nothing but what is mine. Enjoy!
o0o
"Hello."
Team Seven, Naruto and Sakura slightly more visibly than Sasuke, jumped, and Naruto turned around to gape at Kakashi.
"You- You're not late!"
"No shit, dumbass," Sasuke said, smacking Naruto upside the back of his head.
"Hey!" Naruto rounded on Sasuke, ready to punch him, but Sakura grabbed the collar of his shirt and stepped on his toe.
"Be polite, Naruto," she said with a falsely cheery smile. "Kakashi-sensei brought a guest."
Naruto and Sasuke turned back to Kakashi skeptically.
Kakashi smiled serenely under his mask, his eye crinkling. "Children," he said, "This is Sukoshi. She'll be training with us until Hokage-samma sees fit for her to move on."
"But sensei," Sakura said, a bit quieter. "She's just a little girl."
"Yeah!" Naruto cut in, abruptly righteous. "She didn't even graduate from the academy with us!"
"She has gone through a different test, and will likely not participate in the Chuunin exams when the time comes. She requires a different kind of exam."
"If she's so special then why don't they put her with Neji's team?" Sasuke asked, slightly put out that he was no longer the most silent and mysterious person in the group.
"The council has asked me to watch her until she can take care of herself. If she were to train with Neji's team, you would too."
Naruto shuddered, and a despairing look crept briefly across Sakura's face.
"And since we're not training with Neji's team, we'll have to get on with today. I've decided that it's been a while since the bell exercise, and we should have a review."
Naruto groaned as Kakashi handed the two bells to Sukoshi, saying, "I don't want to fight a little girl."
Sukoshi shot him a withering look, then examined the bells in her hand. She turned to Kakashi and raised an eyebrow.
"It's simple, really. You have two bells. The three of them are to steal them from you if they want lunch. My only rule is that you may not hospitalize anyone."
Sukoshi eyed Team 7 critically for a moment, before nodding at Kakashi and vanishing.
Kakashi allowed his eye to crinkle in a smile and held out his hand for their lunches.
o0o
Sakura found Sukoshi first, good with chakra as she was and seeing as Sukoshi's was so recognizable. They sat in not uncomfortable silence, watching the sun filter down through the leaves. She expected the younger girl to do something, ask her some question, but she stayed quiet, so Sakura did as well.
Sasuke found Sukoshi next. He hid in the trees above them and listened to Sakura hum softly to herself while she picked at the grass, and frowned. What was Sakura doing?
His attention was gravitated back to Sukoshi as she shifted, and Sasuke found himself shifting as well to dodge kunai. 'Can't be helped,' he thought, and launched himself at the pair.
Sukoshi lunged from her crouched position, catching Sakura around the waist and depositing her several yards away.
Sasuke scowled at her and they both dodged forward, dancing around each other's flying limbs and sharp objects. Not long after Naruto rushed into the fray, literally, taking both Sasuke and Sukoshi to the ground. It was a fist fight for all of about seven seconds before Sukoshi extracted herself. Naruto and Sasuke untangled themselves from each other, then had a small conversation behind turned backs before turning back and starting to circle their opponent. They continued like that for a while, probably for show, and then attacked from opposite directions. They threw kunai, followed by letter bombs, which she dodged, and, when they were close enough, lunged forward to punch her at the same time.
This, they discovered, was a bad idea. She caught their wrists, using their momentum to turn her body without moving her head. She gathered chakra close to the senbon in her hair, and whipped her head around to meet her body, releasing the chakra as she went. Hundreds of senbon flew threw the air, accompanied by two bells. Sakura watched them fly, one embedding itself in a tree, the other digging a miniature trench through the ground. She picked the one out of the ground, thinking that'd been easier than she thought it would be. If she'd stolen from Naruto, Kakashi-sensei might have been angry.
Sukoshi cursed under her breath as Sakura disappeared through the trees with a bell. So far neither of the boys had noticed, but the dark-haired one wasn't half stupid, and the blond-haired one wasn't as stupid as he probably let people think. But the blond one, he could be dangerous. Especially with the way the chakra in his stomach interacted with hers. She had a feeling that if she so much as touched him with chakra in her hand, someone would explode.
As soon as Naruto backed off a moment to gain a difficult angle, Sukoshi pulled back three of her senbon and set them circling around his head. He stopped and looked at them suspiciously, and Sasuke paused to assess the danger. It was long enough for Sukoshi to charge her hand and catch him across the back of his head. He went down a couple seconds later.
"Hey!" Naruto yelled, alarmed. "Kakashi-sensei said no serious injuries!"
Sukoshi shot him a condescending glance and pulled the second bell out of the tree. She left the senbon circling Naruto and strolled further into the forest, ignoring his yells for her to come back. She needed a quiet place to sit and think.