Chapter 2:

Journey

The penetrating sunlight blinded the awakening pink haired kunoichi as she stepped out of her sleeping bag. Voices belonging to her sensei and team-mate could be heard coming from the small lake near their camping place. It sounded like Naruto and Kakashi-sensei were catching fish for breakfast.

Grunting, she knew it was up to her to make the food edible, as both ninjas were practically useless at that job. They'd probably end up poisoning all of them if any of those two came near preparing food. Naruto's lack of cooking skills wasn't surprising, knowing that the hyperactive blond ninja only lived off of ramen. Kakashi-sensei, on the other hand, was a mystery to Sakura. How he had failed to learn to make decent food from all of the thousands of missions he'd been on in his life amazed her…Then again she'd never seen him eat, let alone drink, as that would require him to take off the mask covering the main lower part of his face. Till this day, none of his apprentices had ever seen him without it on, despite their several attempts to force or trick him to reveal his true face.

Having finally finished packing her things, Sakura stalked to the location of the two ninjas. Naruto was standing in the middle of the lake, waist-deep in water concentrating hard on his prey, whereas the elder ninja stood at the edge of the lake deep into his perverted book. By the look of his dreamy expression, he was probably at an intriguingly adulterated section at the moment.

It suddenly gave Sakura the urge to snatch away his precious book from his grasp as punishment for his perverted thoughts. Masking her chakra, she soundlessly stalked to where he was standing, out of his peripheral one-eyed vision.

--Then, a few seconds later…

"Huh? What the hell? SAKURA!"

At the sound of Kakashi's frantic scream, Naruto turned to watch the scene unfolding before him. To his amusement, Sakura had somehow managed to steal the perverted sensei's paradise book, forcing the grey haired ninja back to his boring unsexy reality. Kakashi was now chasing Sakura around the lake, maniacally desperate to return to his book of paradise.

"Give it back now Sakura! I was reading a really good part!" he screeched, pathetically on the verge of desperation.

Smirking while hiding further away from him in the trees, she replied: "I bet you were you perverted old man."

Damn, Kakashi thought. I don't know where she is.

The pink haired kunoichi had become so skilled at masking her chakra, it was impossible to detect her presence anymore these days. She had recently begun to use this advantage to endlessly tease him, primarily targeting his book.

This hobby had particularly amused Naruto who enjoyed the once-in-a-while reverse change of role with Sakura on teasing their sensei. Scenes of a screaming ninja desperately chasing another were always a good entertainment to his heart and mind.

Especially on this boring mission they were currently on. Why Tsunade-sama had sent them to pick up a Konoha ninja living in the small farmers' village a few 10 miles outside Konoha was beyond his imagination. If the said ninja was as skilled as she had claimed, Naruto wondered why he needed assistance to travel home from a village on friendly relations with their own.

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Half-heartily giving up, Kakashi stopped running and looked at the forest his female student was hiding in.

"Sakura come on. Let's just finish this now, so we can get some breakfast. We'll exhaust ourselves for the rest of the day if we don't eat before exercising."

"Don't try to use that as an excuse, you liar." The sound came from the right-side of the forest. "You just want to get back to your perv--"

Sakura came to an abrupt halt. She made a 360º degree turn as she mentally concentrated; trying to relocate what she had felt a couple of seconds ago.

That's weird. I could have sworn I just sensed it, She thought.

The unfamiliar chakra had disappeared as quickly it had been revealed. In her rush to jump between trees while keeping an eye on Kakashi-sensei's location, she felt certain that for a split second she had sensed another presence somewhere around the three ninjas.

"Sakura? You alright?" Kakashi-sensei didn't seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary.

She shook her head, declaring it as a case of breakfast hunger. If anything, her sensei would have been the first to react to such a thing rather than her, so there was no reason to rush into any irrational conclusions.

"Argh, I'm fine." She stepped out of the forest carelessly holding his precious book in one hand. "Unfortunately the same goes for your book."

In a flash movement, she threw the book towards the lake, a clear smirk on her lips.

"Noooo!" Kakashi both screamed in his mind and aloud.

Quicker than anything remotely recording to the normal eye, the grey haired ninja grabbed his book and was already turned on the right page before his brute interruption.

"You are evil Sakura," he said before returning to his fantasy world. "What I ever did to deserve such evil minded, conniving students…."

Naruto laughed, looking at his team-mate and sensei. They really had started to become close again after almost 3 years apart. He had missed the bossy voice of the pink haired kunoichi and half-hearted attention from his first sensei. Seeing as they had reunited only a month ago, none of the three ninja's had gotten the perfect timing to relax and catch up before this mission.

Sakura had been too busy helping Tsunade-sama in the hospital and Kakashi-sensei had been relaxing after returning from a recent mission he had taken with team Gai. It had seemed the three students of Gai-sensei had taken a toll on his energy, especially Rock Lee who'd adopted the incredibly annoying high spirit of his sensei.

Not being one to be left behind, Naruto had been forced by the Hokage to assist academy students in their small local D-rank missions—rather G-rank in his opinion.

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"If we keep at this pace, we'll be there in a couple of hours at least."

"Do you know exactly where he is Kakashi-sensei?"

"Tsunade told me he was staying with one of the villager's ninja families. We're supposed to meet him there once we reach the village."

"I still don't understand why we have to pick him up. If he's older and more skilled than Sakura and I he should be able to get home by himself, and not be baby-sitted by ninjas to protect his back."

"Naruto! He's obviously some high skilled ninja who needs assistance in remote areas in case of sudden attacks. He's probably targeted by assassins from other villages if he has to be escorted travelling in even safe distances between villages, which probably means he has important information Tsunade-sama will find useful. "

"Good thinking Sakura. Yes, he's a very important Konoha ninja, so we must therefore as fellow ninjas make sure of his safety back to his home."

"I get it… I need to use the toilet, so to speak, so can we take a break?"

"Yeah fine, let's all do whatever we need to do. 5 minutes, then we move on. We have to get there before sunset."

Naruto then walked off into the woods while Sakura and Kakashi set to do their own things.

Kakashi was, unsurprisingly, enveloped in his book, whereas Sakura rummaged through her backpack, extracting a big sandwich. She had skipped lunch not having the appetite after a big breakfast, and so had saved her sandwich for later.

The comfortable silence between the two was broken as Naruto returned from his small visit into the woods. Soon after, the trio continued their journey with the loud voice of Naruto echoing through the forest, keeping all three of them in conversation about random things.

"—And then when I tried to pick up the stupid cat, it scratched me all over my arm, making blood trickle down from where it scratched me. I swear if Konohamaru hadn't taken it away from me, we would've had to buy a new cat to cover up for its death."

Sakura laughed, remembering the black-and-white-stripped cat they had to recover back to its owner when they where assigned D-rank missions as shinobis themselves years ago.

"Naruto that cat never liked you from the minute you insulted it the first time we had to find it."

"Yeah, but that's what I don't get. I never did anything to deserve getting hurt by that stup---"

He was suddenly cut off by a flying kunai, barely skimming past his head and hitting the tree to his left. Sakura ducked as second flying kunai was aimed towards her head. She looked to her right, trying to identify the location of its source.

"Spread out within hearing-range", Kakashi quickly whispered before disappearing.

His two students followed his order, getting ready for the action.

A/N: For some of you reading, it may not sound like something interesting just yet, but just remember it's only the beginning and that I have to get over the introductions and all before going deeper into the characters. If you think the personalities are similar to the original characters', then I hope you read further as, like I said, this is only the intros. I intend to put some twists and all on, so just wait and see ;D

DiamonD-StyleZ