Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto

Author's notes: I would like to thank my brother for editing my chapters, especially the fight scenes. He refuses to co-write or give me ideas though.

Anyway hope you enjoy this chapter…

Chap 4: Revelations

"What kind of a bonding session did you all have?" said Gai as he looked around his surrounding. Dead bodies of the ninjas lay strewn among the area.

" Sensei! We were attacked by five rain ninjas while you were out hunting for food. Fortunately we all cooperated and managed to defeat them all." Lee proudly told Gai as Tenten and Neji filled him in on the details.

"Well, looks like you managed to defeat them. Why did they attack us? What was their purpose? Did they know about our mission?" Gai pondered aloud. " Anyway, there are no more Rain Nins in sight so let's tuck in to the delicious stuff your dear sensei had brought you." Gai dramatically whipped out the bundle of food he had foraged. All around him his team just stared at the food that their sensei expected them to eat. Apparently Gai had gotten a variety of fruits and vegetation of, well, interesting colours and shapes. Neji and the others recognised some of the food but the rest looked as weird as they were unappetising.

" You sure that those food are 100 edible?" Neji questioned Gai, as he raised his right eyebrow up. " I'll stick to eating those that I know for sure won't poison me."

" Come on, where's the flame of youth in you, have you no sense of adventure?" Gai chided Neji.

" Well sensei, if you don't mind, I would also rather not touch those food I'm not familiar with myself. Unless of course you can prove that all of them are safe for consumption AND that they are tasty." Tenten said, as she picked up a strange looking pale orange-coloured fruit.

" Team, just trust Sensei. He wouldn't possibly poison us on a very important mission now would he?" Lee faithfully defended his Sensei.

" You've got a point there. Sensei, you can start educating us on the new edible foods as we begin our meal." Neji said mundanely.

" Now that's more like it. Shinobis go ahead and eat. Your sensei here shall enlighten your young and ever-growing minds." Gai smiled at his team as they sat down to eat and he told them about the taste and location of the strange looking foods. His team was definitely coming together and he was proud of them. And to think that the team didn't have much respect for each other in the beginning. Gai was still worried about the attack that had occurred earlier. What were the Rain Nins doing? And what happened to the missing ninjas from our village? He could only hope that Kurenai's team could successfully complete their mission.

As they were finishing their meal, Neji, who had been thinking about the Rain Ninjas' motives, said," I heard somewhere that Rain Nins were mercenaries who worked for the highest bidder, I think that they were most likely to have been working for their present employer."

" Neji has a good point there. Ha, the wonderful food must have nourished your brain. Ah, the minds of such talented youths never cease to amaze me." Gai commented as Lee nodded his head in agreement whilst Tenten and Neji looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

"I also think that the Rain Ninjas who attacked were not aware of our mission." Neji continued. "They most likely attacked as they were discovered by us and from my observations; they were amateurs with more skills in spying then assassination. And don't go saying that the food you salvaged nourished my brain." Neji added on.

"Oh I would never dream of destroying the intelligence of such a magnificent flower as you. I believe you are right so we shall treat this incident as a coincidence and from now on make extra sure that the Rain Nins don't figure out that we are intruding into their business. Tomorrow we shall resume our journey. Shinobis, let's all get some sleep now and renew our energy of youth before dawn! Lee, you and I shall take the first watch while Neji and Tenten get some shuteye first. Remember, you two take over the watch after two hours. Sleep well then and don't let the insects bite you!" Gai told Neji and Tenten.

Then he and Lee positioned themselves at strategic watch spots as Neji leaned against a tree to rest and Tenten removed her bandage and crept into her sleeping bag. She turned to face Neji who was resting a few metres away from her and tossed him a blanket.

"Here, you don't want to catch a cold now do you?" Tenten said.

"What? Don't you know that I don't catch colds even though I don't use a blanket?" Neji replied as he caught the blanket thrown to him.

"Well, you do have a jacket but still is it not more comfortable having a blanket?" Tenten asked, smiling at Neji's act of toughness. Tenten's smile must have been infectious for Neji couldn't help but smile back.

"…Thanks anyway…how's your leg doing?" Neji opened up the folded woolly blanket that Tenten passed to him and draped it over himself. Hmm, this blanket sure is comfy, but I can't let her know that.

"Much better now, thanks to you. I think I should be fully recovered by tomorrow. Ahh, I hope that we can successfully complete this mission." Tenten stifled a yawn as she lay her head down on the sleeping bag.

"We will." Neji reassured Tenten.

Tenten just stared into his eyes. They seemed to draw her in. His eyes though cold and frightening most of the time, always seem to soften whenever he spoke to her and gave her a sense of security. Tenten had always admired the genius Neji for who knows how long. Too bad her skills were way beneath his and she could never match up to him. That was probably a reason why she couldn't bring herself to ask Neji if he had feelings for her. Even if Neji didn't think much of her, she was glad that at least they were friends. But she always had a small hope that one day Neji would actually develop feelings for her. She sighed and closed her eyes to get some rest.

Meanwhile, Neji was looking at Tenten and thinking how sweet she looked when she was sleeping. Although she didn't let down her hair as she felt that their rest time would be too short to remove her buns, she still looked cute in his eyes. The moonlight fell upon Tenten's sleeping form gave Neji the impression that she was an angel sent from above. Looking at the image, Neji wished he could capture it in a painting. Tenten looked so sweet in that pose, but heck, she looked sweet no matter what she was doing.

Neji would never admit it but he was slowly beginning to like Tenten more and more each day. But best friends grow closer in their friendship now don't they? She was somehow different from the other girls and always tried to improve her skills. The sort of girl he liked…

Just then Gai popped out of nowhere and said to Neji, "Hey why don't you follow the good example of Tenten over there and get some rest. You have only one hour and forty minutes left so you'd better let the spring of youth within you rest or you'll wither really soon."

"…Fine." Neji mumbled to his Sensei as he closed his eyes to rest until it was his turn to keep watch.

A half dead girl stumbled out of the kitchen and went into the nearest toilet. Her brother turned to his Sensei, "Are you sure she's not going to die, cha. It is the worst concoction you have come up with so far and her face looks more horrible than the previous times she had to taste your concoctions, cha. She did find out about Makendo and his men, so do take pity on her, cha."

"Aye, not to worry my gakkyuu, your sister will be fine. I think I added a tad too many digestive prunes in the drink though. " Clearing the kitchen table, their sensei stored the remains of the drink in the storage room. " She knows very well how I feel about her missing her training sessions and being out in the open alone leaves her vulnerable to detection. You do know very well that you can't be detected now do you."

"Yes Sensei, we know that we are supposed to be dead, cha. In fact, we are the only living proof of our clan, cha. So sensei, can we have our dinner before our night training now, cha. We're really hungry."

"Of course you all can. Just call your sister out here and I'll whip up a delicious meal for you young ninjas. Just for fun, both of you need to be blindfolded and guess which of the dishes placed before you is your meal. The rest…let's just say they are more appetizing than they look. Okay, off you go to call your sister."

" Sensei, that's not fun!" moaned his gakkyuu. " No wonder you grew up with a sadistic face like that…" he muttered as he left the kitchen to check on his sister while dodging two kunais his sensei threw at him for his impudent remark.

Switching on the gas to cook some ramen, the sadistic sensei reviewed what his gakkyuu had reported to him before she reluctantly swallowed his Charlious Concoction, a mixture of fruits and other secret ingredients. So Makendo was up to his tricks again. Well he certainly wasn't going to get his hands on the fire-red orb. The orb contained special powers, powers that could be harnessed to slaughter a hundred people at a shot, but that was not his main objective. Killing many people at a shot was Makendo's goal; Makendo had a twisted mind and planned to wipe out the entire Rain Village and make it his own.

With such power, Makendo could threaten villages with the orb's power and who knows what corrupted actions he would carry out. The orb had somehow ended up in Konoha during the Forth Hokage's reign. Nobody knew how it got there. He was told about it when he was a mere six by his sensei. His sensei was now dead, brutally murdered by Makendo's large army.

As he stirred the ramen in the pot, he sighed. He needed the orb to rid him of the effects of a horrible experiment gone wrong. After his sensei died, Makendo's men took him as their prisoner and did laboratory experiments on him. They wanted to make a powerful monster to serve under them and thus tried to merge his body with that of a lizard demon but failed horribly, well what did you expect from amateurs and fools like them.

The experiments were painful and caused him to have a tough scaly skin like that of a thorny devil on his arms and legs. He managed to escape from his tormenters one night and freed the captive lizard demon. From then on, he made a pact with the lizard demon and summoned the lizard demon whenever he needed the lizard's help. He had honed his skills but could never defeat Makendo's army, they were just too many for him to handle.

With the orb in his possession, the powers in the orb could cure his lizard modifications and habits; sometimes he would instinctively whip out his forked tongue to grab disgusting bugs, which made him frustrated. Not only that, with the orb, he could defeat Makendo and his army once and for all. He had, many a time, pondered the possibility of enlisting Konoha's help, but always came to the same negative conclusion. He had no trust in villages, a trait inherited from his sensei, who was an outcast of the Rain.

Seeing that the ramen was cooked, he poured them into three separate bowls and took out some packets of food from his store cupboard. He vowed that he would get the orb in Konoha, after all, he knew exactly where it was stored after years of spying, and beat Makendo to a pulp. Smiling to himself, he called his gakkyuus to enter the kitchen blindfolded and watched as they concentrated on using their sense of smell to detect the ramen. He was not alone in his mission; he always had his loyal and hardworking gakkyuus to help him, though they could be disrespectful to him at times.