Once Kakashi left, Tsunami rose her hand and asked, "So, how would you three wish to acquaint yourselves with us, hm?"
"How about we introduce ourselves and tell each other a little bit about where we come from?" Sakura replied.
"How about we talk over some ramen?" Naruto replied.
Sasuke turned his head away, mumbling, "Quickly. I don't want to waste my time chatting with three girls who won't learn how to behave themselves."
Tsunami lowered her hand and cutely glared at Sasuke. "Hey! I'll have you know we're a team of Rank-1 ninjas only, buster! You wanna get rough?"
Akiko stuck her hand out towards Tsunami, as did Ayame, and they both said, "Down, Tsunami."
The both of them lowered their hands and Akiko said, "Let's chat over this ramen stuff you speak of. It sounds intriguing."
"You bet it is! I'll take you guys to the best ramen shop in town!" He chuckled a bit and started walking off, with his team following close to him, and Akiko's team not long after them. During the walk, they heard Naruto ask Sakura while whispering, "Hey, Sakura, what's intriguing mean?"
Tsunami giggled when Sakura hit him on the top of his head and nearly yelled, "You idiot!!!" then went on to explain what the word meant. Which took all the way to the ramen shop to do. Once there, a combination of wonderful smells filled their nostrils and they looked around. It pretty much looked like an open-air noodle shop, and Tsunami and Naruto had already taken their seats and placed their orders. Akiko lead Ayame to the seat next to Tsunami's, then took a seat next to her as well. Sakura sat next to Akiko and Sasuke sat away from everyone else, as if they all had pneumonia or something.
"What's his problem?" Tsunami asked as Akiko, Ayame, and Sakura placed their orders.
"He's not much of a people person," Sakura answered.
"So, you go first," Akiko said to Sakura, grabbing chopsticks for herself and Ayame.
As she handed Ayame's hers, Sakura began to introduce herself as so, "Well, I'm Haruno Sakura. I'm very good at controlling my chakra, and I'm one of the smartest students from the academy the year I graduated!"
"Anything else?" Tsunami asked as her order was placed in front of her. She pulled her chopsticks apart as Sakura shook her head. "Well, that sounds boring," Tsunami said as she began to pig out on her noodles.
"What about you, ummm..." Sakura asked, pointing to Ayame.
Akiko nudged her a little to tell her Sakura was speaking to her and she asked, "Me?" Sakura nodded as everyone else's orders were placed in front of them.
"Well, I am Tasunagi Ayame, of the Tasunagi clan. We are all known for being blind, and using ninjutsu and genjutsu to make living in the world of the seeing easier. Some of us are even known for using taijutsu as well, but not very many specialize in it."
"Wait, your whole entire family is blind?" Naruto asked, having just swallowed down a mouthful of noodles.
"Yep," Ayame answered "We don't know why, either. We've just learned to use Ninja arts to deal with it, and maybe even seeing eye animals or guides."
"Guides?" Sakura asked.
"People who can see," Akiko answered, grabbing some more noodles to eat with her chopsticks. "What about you, blondey?" she asked Naruto.
"My name's Uzumaki Naruto, and I'm going to become the next Hokage no matter what! Believe it!!!" he replied between bites.
Akiko shook her head and asked Sakura sarcastically, "Complicated one, isn't he?"
Sakura nodded and replied in the same tone, "Yup, sure is," with a small anime vein.
"Tsunami, you go next," Akiko commanded. Tsunami finished up the last of her ramen and took a deep relieved breath, like she was eating too fast, which was followed with a very loud belch.
"I'm Kageryu Tsunami, and umm... well, I'm very good with summoning jutsus and taijutsu as well!" She giggled nervously and Akiko got an anime sweat drop, along with her earlier comment on Naruto from Sakura. She nodded as Tsunami continued. "Oh! And I can also pull off this really cool move I made up that I like to call Two Fisted Monkey Style Barrage!!! HOOAAHH!!!" She made some ridiculous pose and Akiko chucked a small scroll at her.
"Stop being stupid in public, Tsunami," she commanded blankly as she finished up her ramen.
Tsunami picked up the scroll and giggled, saying, "Yay! Cream puffs in this one!"
Akiko shook her head and turned to Sakura asking, "My turn now?"
"Mmm-hmm!" she replied, nodding.
Once Akiko finished her noodles, she took a deep breath and said, "My name is Akiko. I'm not sure what my last name is, especially since I was orphaned right after my mother gave birth to me, and I've had no luck finding it out, really. It took me a few months of deciding, but once I became a Ninja, I made up my mind that I would have to trust whoever I'm stuck with for the rest of my life with my most dangerous secrets, and that I would dedicate my life to protecting my country from one of them."
"One of what?" Sakura asked. She got a glare from Akiko, and the background behind her was all black, with her eyes glowing yellow and "The Glare of Ultimate Death" written in red Japanese characters all over. Actually, it was just a sign Tsunami was holding behind her head and some glitter she threw in front of Akiko's face, so she thwacked her with her chopsticks and went back to giving the glare to Sakura.
She got a bit of a look on her face like she was going to puke and mumbled, "Okay, I won't press the matter."
Sasuke's voice emerged from the behind them, asking, "If you're so intent on protecting your country from whatever terrible secret you may hold, then why the hell did you get in trouble enough to get transferred here?"
Akiko turned to give him an emotionless look and replied, "Sometimes, what is seen as kindness can be seen as bullying, as such the case in little kids trying to get the attentions of the ones they like. The adults merely believe it was bullying because they did not see the event themselves, therefore the kid trying to get it's special person's attention ends up being punished for liking that person."
She just got stares from everyone, minus Ayame of course, and Sasuke turned away and walked out of the ramen shop muttering, "Whatever."
"Wait, so you liked some guy and got punished for getting his attention?" Naruto asked.
Sakura chucked her chopsticks at him and yelled, "YOU IDIOT! THAT'S NOT WHAT SHE MEANT!!!" She calmed down and turned to Akiko, asking, "So, what did you three get in trouble for, anyways?"
Akiko entwined her fingers together, with the palms facing each other and rested her chin on them and answered flatly, "We stole a few sacred scrolls here and there, snuck into the central district a few times to steal rare artifacts, and even tried killing a legendary ninja or two."
"Now, why would you guys do that?"
Tsunami shrugged and replied, "Don't ask me! I only follow orders from Akiko or our sensei!"
"Same here," Ayame added.
Sakura looked at Akiko and she said flatly, "I will not divulge into the finer details, but I will leave it at the tale of the little children getting their special person's attention."
"Alright, so how does doing those things help your country?" Sakura asked.
"Let's just say that if I don't use enough chakra each and every single day," she said, with a bit of a blood-thirsty look coming about her eyes, "something bad will happen..."
Tsunami shook her head and said, "That's all you're ever going to get out of her, Sakura-chan. She hasn't even told US, HER CLOSEST FRIENDS, the specific details why she had us helping her with that stuff."
"Why not?" Naruto asked.
Akiko's eyes turned to look at him as she answered, "Because I'm still not sure if I can trust them with that secret yet..."
"Well, why the hell not? They're your friends, aren't they!?!"
"Yes. The best I ever had."
"Then why don't you tell them about it!?!" Akiko turned around, as if checking for those who might be eavesdropping and gave Naruto the same look she gave Sakura earlier.
"Let's just say that some things are better left unknown, alright?" The server came and asked for money to pay for the bill. Sasuke had left by now, and it looked like he payed for himself. Sakura searched her pockets and had this "oh shit" look about her face. Naruto did the same and the server looked at Akiko, Ayame, and Tsunami with a serious look.
"I'm sorry," Ayame said. "I don't carry money with me."
Tsunami laughed nervously and said, "Sorry! Flat broke!" Akiko shook her head and pulled a scroll from one of her pouches. She opened it a little and did some hand signs, then tapped a symbol near the upper left-hand corner. It flashed for a second, then suddenly three pendant-shaped chunks of gold appeared.
She picked them up and gave them to the server, saying, "Don't worry. They aren't fake." She rolled up the scroll and put it back in the pouch she pulled it from and walked away from the restaurant.
"Wow!" Naruto and Sakura said at the same time. "How did you do that?"
"Simple. I sealed the gold into the scroll, then used a seal breaking jutsu developed in my country to take it back out. Any Rank-7 ninja could do it, really."
"Rank-7?" Sakura asked. "Didn't Tsunami-san say that you three were Rank-1's?"
"Yes, she did. Rank-1's are higher than Rank-7's, Sakura-san."
"How many Ranks are there, Akiko-san?"
"Well, there are seven, really. Rank-7's are straight out of the academy, Rank-6's are the next level up, then Rank-5, Rank-4, Rank-3, Rank-2, and finally Rank-1. Ninja chosen to lead their districts are known as Rank-0, and the ninja that lead them are known as Rank-Negatives. There are also a few Rank-Half ninjas, who are qualified to be Rank-0, but weren't chosen to be such. Exams to go up one Rank are held once annually, and so far there's only been one team from our country who's ever been able to pass them all consecutively without passing any exams to be ready for them the next year."
"And who would they be?"
"You're looking right at them," Ayame answered. "But it sure as hell wasn't easy."
"Especially with Brainless Tsunami for a team-mate," Akiko added.
"HEY!!!" she shouted. "At least I didn't hold you guys back any year for my screw-ups!!!"
"Tsunami, you know it's because we got Tsukiko-sensei to teach you your best moves," Akiko said, giving her an evil neko look.
"Are Rank-7 ninjas academy level shinobi?" Sakura asked.
"No," Ayame answered. "Rank-7's just got out of the academy compared to the other ranks. Academy graduation exams are held at the same time as the Rank-up exams, so that the newer students have a more equal time to train compared to the others."
"So, what are these Rank-up tests like?"
"Deadly," Akiko answered, with that neko face still plastered on. "Hell, the only exams known NOT to kill people are the academy graduation exams, and even those are still tough as hell."
"How deadly are we talking here?"
"Well, the first exams usually kill off a tenth of the applicants, the ones the Rank-6's take usually kill off a fourth, and only half survive the test to become Rank-5's. Then only a fourth of the Rank-4's can live through the next exams, and four fifths of Rank-3's never live to see the light of day again. The final Rank-up exams only let one tenth of the applicants survive, and they'd be lucky not to have broken nearly all of their limbs by the time the proctors declare them Rank-1 ninjas."
"Wow! How did you guys survive?" Sakura asked.
Tsunami turned to face her and giggled while answering, "We did some clever improvising to fool the proctors!"
"So you cheated?"
"Only in the fight-to-the-death battles," Akiko replied. "See, one you're an official Rank-3 ninja, all the exams you take from there require battle-to-the-death situations, and you can't fake the opponent's death or have them quit, either. Winner lives, and the loser pushes up daisies by the end of the week."
"Our victims, however, were planting daisies by the end of the week," Ayame said.
"Huh?"
"We sealed them in our scrolls and released them in a plant nursery in our sister district with their memories completely erased and all their clothes burned to ashes."
"Is that last part really necessary?"
"Yes. Most ninja from our country wear co much clothing that you wouldn't recognize them if they were naked!" Tsunami giggled at Akiko's answer and she stopped in her tracks, causing everyone else to stop as she stared at the ground wide-eyed for a moment. She turned to Sakura and asked, "Know of a good place to spar?"
"Yeah. Are you okay?" Akiko smiled and nodded.
"Nothing a little fight won't fix. Like I said. I need to burn chakra, and it's starting to get a bit too much for comfort right now."
"Alright! Follow me!" She motioned for them to follow, which they did, and ended up finding Sasuke training by himself in the area Sakura lead them to.