Warnings: Puddle Abuse and lapse in sanity on Kakashi's part.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Also, no puddles were harmed in the making of this chapter.


Child of the Earth

Chapter Seven: Puddles and Battles


It was getting a bit boring now that it was midday. Sakura and Naruto had quickly run out of things to talk about and both were struggling for conversation topics. Sasuke and Kakashi could easily stand the silence but Sakura was a talker and Naruto always had questions…

However, he quickly learned that, unlike Jiraiya, Kakashi would answer Naruto's questions as vaguely as possible, leaving the boy wondering what exactly he'd asked in the first place.

Furthermore, 'How many suiton jutsu do you know?' is not a yes or no question, thanks.

Sighing to himself, Naruto figured he'd move on to something he'd been planning on doing. Shuffling about in his backpack, the young blond let a pleased sound escaped his lips when he found the item he was blindly groping for under the flap. Pulling out a scroll, Naruto held it out in front of Sakura.

The young kunoichi blinked, staring down at the scroll being offered to her. "Huh? What's this?"

Naruto beamed at her, gesturing for her to take the scroll. "A present! Well, sorta."

Confused, Sakura took the scroll and opened it, staring at the contents. "This is… an ijutsu?"

"Yup! It was a gift to me, but I have no talent for anything medic-related, really. Medical ninjutsu requires an insane amount of chakra control and brains. While I can do it… it's impractical for me. I don't need it."

Sakura again looked confused, wondering why Naruto wouldn't need something valuable as this. "Are you sure…? I mean, if it was a gift…"

"Positive. Baa-chan would love to see it put to good use."

A wide smile broke out on Sakura's face as she scanned the contents of the scroll again. This was going to be fun. She could just tell.

Beside her, Sasuke slowly felt the beginnings of jealousy seep into him. Why did Sakura get a scroll and not him? Why was Naruto playing favourites? Wait, why did he care? It was a medic jutsu, after all. Lame.

Kakashi watched the interactions between his students quietly. If Sakura could really master a beginning medic jutsu, then he'd have to see about getting her some more of those. Medics were hard to find and good medics were even harder. Plus, he could get her to rub his back down whenever he had problems—

Bad Kakashi. Baaaaad.


A puddle.

A muddy rain puddle in the middle of the road.

A muddy rain puddle in the middle of the road, directly in Naruto's path.

It demanded to be jumped in.

And who was Naruto to ignore its demands?

With a squeal, Naruto made a bee-line to the puddle and jumped, both feet landing in the middle of the waterhole. He giggled as water splashed and soaked the hems of his pants. He jumped one more time for good measure.

And stopped when he heard an "oof!"

Blinking owlishly, Naruto stared at the puddle he stood in, before turning back to his team. "SENSEI! This puddle just talked!"

Sasuke arched a brow, while Sakura, nose buried in her scroll, didn't spare the blond a second glance. Kakashi raised his brows in amusement. "Is that so? What did it say?"

"OOF!"

"And what should we do about that?" Kakashi further inquired, visible eye curving into an arc to signify he was smiling.

"DO IT AGAIN!" Naruto shouted with glee, raising one foot and slamming it down in the puddle again. This time, the strangled cry emitting from the puddle was heard by all.

"My, that puddle sounds distressed," Kakashi commented idly.

Sasuke's eyes narrowed as Sakura closed her scroll and tucked it away, nervously pushing a piece of pink hair behind her ear. Her first battle. Her first real battle and everyone else was acting all cool while she was fidgeting. Great.

Kakashi rested a hand on Sakura's shoulder. "Maa, don't worry, Sakura. I'll always protect you."

Sakura looked up at her sensei to respond, but stopped short when Naruto shouted as the puddle exploded, water going everywhere and creating a nice diversion as two figures leapt out of the spray, heading straight for Sakura and Kakashi, the latter pushing the former out of the way as a bladed chain wrapped around him. With a sharp tug, Kakashi was ripped to shreds.

Of course, what hit the ground was nothing but chunks of wood. Sasuke took a split second to wonder where Kakashi got those nicely cut logs to switch his body with before charging at the closer of the two ninja. Leaping up, he avoided a direct attack and landed on the shoulder of the ninja whose hitai-ate was that of the Mist. A swift kick to the head caused the ninja to lose balance as Sasuke whipped out a kunai and threw it, catching the man's shoulder. He grunted, reaching behind him to pull it out as Sasuke quickly formed the seals for his katon jutsu. Inhaling sharply, Sasuke released his breath through his mouth, forming a large ball of fire that sailed straight toward the Mist ninja.

It was met with a blast of water and resulted in a lot of steam, fogging Sasuke's vision. Scowling, the young Uchiha squinted, looking around for his opponent. He felt a presence behind him and turned to see Naruto rush past him and into the steamy haze.

"You idiot!" Sasuke called, only realizing too late he'd given away his position. Scowling, he quickly dove to the right as a claw came down where he had been standing. Where were Sakura and Kakashi, anyways? And what the hell was Naruto doing?

Naruto had immediately realized that the ninja of the Mist relied on, well, mist and fog to conceal their presence. Naruto also knew that his olfactory senses were sharper than anyone else in his team. Therefore, it was only logical for him to charge straight into the steam.

Except, it was kind of hot, being steam and all. And, well, the steam happened to be fogging his senses a bit. No pun intended, of course.

However, he managed to dodge a blow aimed to cleave his head off and flipped back, landing on all fours. Cutting his eyes to the left, Naruto leapt again and tackled his opponent to the ground, quickly moving away before the large claws could clip him. He whirled around to attack the person behind him when the familiar scent of strawberries assaulted his senses. He skidded to a stop in front of Sakura who froze, kunai in front of her and eyes wide. "N-Naruto?'

The whizzing sound of metal cutting through the air made Naruto snap back to attention as he grabbed Sakura and jumped, moving out of the way of any oncoming attacks.

Two thuds later, he turned to see Kakashi standing in the slowly fading mist, one of the foreign ninja in each arm, Sasuke standing a few feet away and looking a bit surprised.

"Sorry it took me so long, guys. Got something in my eye." Problem was, he seemed all too cheerful while saying that…

Naruto frowned, gently easing Sakura onto her feet and once assured she had her own footing, walked up to Kakashi. "Sensei… who are they?"

"They appear to be Chuunin from Kirigakure. Why they're attacking us, I'm not sure. After all, this is a C-rank mission. Our job is to wheedle out some ghosts, not take out foreign ninja."

"Perhaps they're rogue ninja," Sasuke commented quietly.

"That's almost certain, but I want to know why they attacked us." Kakashi's brow furrowed. "But first, we need to get Naruto's wound taken care of. The claws these guys using are poisoned and I, unfortunately, didn't act quick enough to stop you from getting cut by them."

Sure enough, there was a cut on Naruto's hand, not very deep, but deep enough to be of some concern. "Aha… I thought you wouldn't notice…" Naruto murmured sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head with his unscathed hand.

Sakura worried on her bottom lip. If she was able to learn jutsu really fast like some people, she'd be able to heal Naruto's hand. Maybe even extract the poison herself! However, Naruto didn't seem very concerned.

"Naruto, just because you want this mission to succeed doesn't mean we should ignore your injuries," Kakashi started only to stop when Sakura stepped between Naruto and himself and took Naruto's hand, inspecting it.

"I'm sorry, Naruto. I haven't learned the jutsu you gave me so I can't heal your wound," Sakura mumbled, hanging her head. Naruto stared at her, then glanced down at his injured hand in Sakura's.

"It's OK, Sakura-chan. I'll be fine," Naruto assured trying to ease his hand out of Sakura's without drawing attention to the action. However, Sakura looked up and stopped, her breath catching as a strange expression passed over her features.

Kakashi watched with a fairly passively expression as the cut on Naruto's hand sizzled and slowly began to close. After about a minute, all that was left was a thin, pink line.

Sasuke stared with awe as Sakura slowly let go of Naruto's hand. "What… how… what?"

Naruto quickly fumbled for an explanation that didn't sound too far-fetched, but Sasuke beat him to the punch. "Is that some sort of clan specialty or kekkei genkai?"

Naruto gave a weak smile. "Something like that…"

After all, he was the only Uzumaki alive, so in a way, it was clan-specific. Or rather, just Naruto-specific.

Prying his wrist out of Sakura's grasp and inevitably snapping her out of her stupor, Naruto shifted and looked up to his sensei. "What next, sensei?"

"An excellent question, Naruto!" Kakashi replied, happy to change the subject. Sakura and Sasuke seemed reluctant to let it go, now that they had discovered their teammate had some accelerated cell regeneration.

Kakashi made quick work of the two Mist Chuunin, tying them to a tree with some rather complicated (and ornate, Sasuke thought) knot work. "Saa… I don't suppose you two would tell me who you work for, now would you?" He tried.

No response.

"Hmm… What was your mission?" Kakashi tried again, rubbing his chin.

Again, no response.

"Tricky fellas, aren't you?"

"Uhm, sensei. I think they're unconscious."

"Excellent deduction, Sakura," Kakashi replied without missing a beat. Sasuke sighed. Sometimes, the man seemed really capable. Other times, he wondered if Kakashi was really all there…

"Oh, wow! I can see the whites of this one's eyes!"

Same went for Naruto, too.


"They seem quite capable, Zabuza-san. Especially the masked one. He took out the demon brothers with no trouble at all."

"That man… is Konohagakure's Copy Ninja Kakashi."

"You know him?"

"I know of him. He's a jounin from Konoha. This should prove very interesting, Haku."

"Indeed."


Kakashi looked up from his inspection of the two Chuunin and into the forest off the road. 'If this was no fluke, and my gut instinct tells me it's not, then we need to be more careful. I can't turn around now. It's getting late and we're almost at the village. If they send a jounin-level, I'll deal with him.'

"Saa, ready to continue? We're almost there!"

"You said that an hour ago, sensei," Sakura muttered.

"Yes, but an hour ago, we were only a few meters down the road. We were attacked, remember? Fighting takes up lots of time!"

Sakura gave a flat look.


"Well, here we are," Kakashi stated, placing his hands on his hips. He glanced down at his three students who were staring at the small town that greeted them.

With pitchforks and torches.

Sakura shivered and glanced up to her sensei for some sort of reassurance.

"Hey, I think there's a chapter of 'Icha Icha' that begins like this…"

Nope, forget it. No reassurance was to be found with one Hatake Kakashi.

To Be Continued…


AN: Reason for not updating? Full-time college student, lack of inspiration and procrastinator extraordinaire. Thanks for the reviews! I appreciate them. Especially those long ones XP

Apologies on the short chapter. I know it's not as long as my normal min of 2500 words but I thought that was a decent place to stop it. And I have… to flee now.

Phoe-chan