9.

I could deal with keeping things from my parents. I could even deal with Ino having to ferry between me and Hinata. Because those weren't things I had to be reminded of every day of my life. But my teammate friction? It definitely, definitely was.

And after a while, I just got so fed up with it that I had to do something.

D ranks now went like this:

Kakashi would take his usual amount of time to make it to our bridge meeting place. Naruto would spend the entire time he waited ranting about how awful Kakashi was.

Then, once Kakashi had arrived, we would all go to the mission assignments room and Kakashi would give us our mission. Once it was pulling weeds from a woman's herb garden, which was full of plants even Haku would have been proud of, most of which I could now name; another time it was picking trash and litter out of a river bed, which had been requested and paid for by the Konoha Environmental Protection Society.

Naruto would complain and refuse to do well in the mission on principle just because Kakashi assigned the mission. Kakashi would sharply rebuke Naruto, who would respond back with stubborn anger.

Then inevitably, Naruto would be pulled into competing on the mission with Sasuke, as if they were trying to be extra macho to make up for all the girly hand holding that must inevitably come from one saving the other's life. I would try to get between Sasuke and Naruto, irritated, and Naruto would give me one of his hurt looks and look away in something like anger. Sasuke would snap that this mission was stupid anyway, as he seemed to be doing more and more lately ever since coming back from a mission chalk full of fighting really strong people. Then, throwing himself back into the work, Naruto would get so upset he would begin to screw up the mission.

And I would get frustrated and want to pound everybody's skull in. Meanwhile, Kakashi would retreat into one of his books, because apparently he was as emotionally retarded as Sasuke.

What we needed was what Kakashi apparently refused to provide us: another long away mission to put ourselves on the line and get our team cohesion back together. I knew that was all we needed, even if no one else seemed to. So finally I just decided to go over Kakashi, like I had last time.

It was time to talk to the Hokage about getting another C rank.


"Hokage-sama," I began, stepping forward in the mission assignments room one afternoon after we'd just come back from a D rank. My teammates looked over at me in surprise. "I would like to request a higher level mission for our team seven."

The Hokage waited, looking to my teammates behind me expectantly. "I second that," Sasuke agreed quickly, and Naruto said, "No, I second that!"

"I said it first, dumbass -"

"Screw you -!"

Kakashi merely sighed.

"So you both agree with Sakura?" the Hokage called out in a slightly louder tone at last. Naruto and Sasuke both looked around.

"Of course," said Sasuke.

Naruto looked down, silent. And at this, the Hokage's eyebrows creased in concern.

"Kakashi," the Hokage said at last, "you are their Sensei. What do you think?"

"Honestly, Hokage-sama," said Kakashi, "our team has seen better days."

Panicking, I added quickly, "But a C rank could improve team cohesion by getting us to work together! Right, Sensei?" I glared at Kakashi meaningfully.

Kakashi looked me in the eyes for a moment. Then he sighed, again, and rolled his eyes. "Alright," he said, "I guess we could try it."

"That's not exactly the most ringing endorsement," said the Hokage dryly, going for his wood pipe.

"But we've definitely proven we can handle high level missions in the past!" I argued. "Remember the Wave mission?"

And here, a flash of guilt passed across the Hokage's face. I knew it was one of the only reasons why he agreed:

"Alright. Let's see if I can assign an actual C rank this time."


The Hokage called out a command to bring Lord Jye in the room. Lord Jye was one of the Fire Daimyo's lords. The first time I'd met a noble for a mission, I'd been excited and awed, but I'd soon learned that they knew very little about ninja and mostly just paid to have ninja do work that they considered beneath them. Lord Jye was like the rest: dressed in bright silk clothes and distinctly snotty.

"Lord Jye has a document he would like you to retrieve for him, from a person being guarded by non-ninja fighters," the Hokage began leadingly, and then looked to Lord Jye for assistance.

Lord Jye cleared his throat. His voice, when he spoke, was almost comically high. His nose pointed constantly up in the air like he was balancing a ball on the end of it, and his face was thin and rat like. "There is an evil lord presiding within the Fire Daimyo's court," he began dramatically, and our eyebrows rose steeply. "This man has insulted and hindered me half a million times! There is nothing he will not stoop to in order to get in my way! Now he has stolen a document containing sensitive information from my private stores. I know it is in his possession - where else would it be? He is traveling with a caravan to the capital as we speak. Your job is to steal the document back from him. It will have this seal on it." He indicated to the sleeve of his kimono.

"You want us to steal from another lord?" Kakashi asked dreadingly.

"Why are you complaining? This is cool!" said Naruto excitedly.

"It's political trouble is what it is," Kakashi muttered. "Spectacular."

"If the information within this scroll gets out, it will ruin me! No one is to read it. Not even you." And here, Lord Jye's eyes narrowed.


I didn't particularly like Lord Jye, but a mission was a mission. We were to do what we'd been assigned to do. Even Sasuke and Naruto, usually so bad tempered these days, seemed interested in our assigned task. I held out hope privately that this might be just what we needed.

We began that very evening, because we couldn't afford to let Lord Kura - our target - get any farther ahead of us than he already was. We left the village through the gates and used our tracking skills to follow the Lord based on his covered vehicle's ground marks and the hoof marks of the bulls pulling it. Kakashi even let out his dog summons to wander ahead and follow the trail. But we already knew where he was headed: the capital. We just had to figure out which way he was using to get there. This was easy to do. Lord Kura was not trying to hide because he didn't know he was being followed.

We followed the caravan - which usually consisted of a covered vehicle for the Lord and his family, and samurai walking in a guard around the lord's vehicle on all sides - down through the forests of northern Fire Country and into southern Fire Country. There, the trees opened out onto flat land, lots of golden fields and plains. It took us a day and a half to catch up to the caravan, and we were moving at an exhaustive pace the entire way, stopping only to sleep briefly in a tiny, dingy, dot on the map civilian village out on the plains.

The entire way there - literally, the entire way - Sasuke and Naruto never. Stopped. Arguing. They would bicker over everything! Which way we were going, who was running faster, who was going to take all the "cool parts" during the mission, and everything else! Naruto wouldn't listen to Kakashi when Kakashi ordered him to fall in any certain formation, Kakashi threatened to throw Naruto off his team, and Naruto wouldn't even speak to me which was infuriating because I was being the rational one.

It was around this time that I started to think the whole thing had just been a bad idea.


By the end of the second day, we were following along at a safe pace behind the caravan. It was in sight, up ahead of us. That night, when the caravan stopped, so did we, and we made our campfire behind a row of large boulders where we wouldn't be spotted.

We sat around the campfire and Kakashi planned.

"Let's just blitz the place! Burst right in and demand he give us the scroll back!" Naruto began, pounding with his fist.

"That's idiotic," said Sasuke scathingly immediately, and Naruto jumped to his feet.

"Do you have a problem with me?!"

"No, but apparently you have one with me."

"Naruto, stop trying to kill Sasuke," said Kakashi sharply. "We're not just blitzing the place!"

"Well, I am!" Naruto snarled, whirling around.

"No," said Kakashi in a dangerous, cold tone, "you're not."

Naruto opened his mouth stupidly to argue, and at last I snapped, "Naruto, stop it! If this were a prank, what would you do? Would you just charge in?"

Naruto looked away, his jaw clenched. "... No," he said in a low tone at last.

"Exactly. What would you do?" I said sharply.

"... Have someone sneak in," Naruto muttered, still not looking at me.

"- While the rest of the team provides a distraction. Exactly." Kakashi sat back, though he still seemed displeased. "And that's what we're going to do."

"Who's going to sneak in?" Naruto asked immediately, looking up. "Can it be me? I want to be the one doing cool things and protecting the team!"

"You would be best served on the outside, Naruto. You'd have more of a chance to 'be cool and protect the team' that way. The person who sneaks in should be stealthy, and you're loud and you wear orange. Your ability to surround the place with physical copies of yourself would be a boon as a distraction, on top of everything else," Kakashi listed off.

"Well, I don't want to be the one who sneaks in," Sasuke announced, surprising everyone. He glared sideways at Naruto and then said firmly, "I want to attack samurai and indulge in pyromania. It should be Kakashi who goes in."

"Simple enough," said Kakashi, shrugging. "Alright -"

"Wait," I said. "What about me?"

Everyone turned around to look at me.

"I'm good with genjutsu, which is important for stealth," I said. "But I'm also the smallest and lightest on the team. I'm smaller and lighter than Kakashi. I would be able to sneak in easier. Shouldn't Kakashi-sensei be leading the battle part of the mission?"

"But you won't just be engaging in battle if you sneak in," said Naruto worriedly, as if before he could stop himself. "You'll be penetrating deep into the enemy's territory. That's too dangerous -"

"I'm a ninja, I'm supposed to do dangerous."

"Sakura -" Sasuke began in a pained voice.

"Kakashi-sensei." I turned to him. "You know it makes sense."

Kakashi looked torn for a moment. "I hate to say it," he said at last. "But it does." And so, over the boys' protests, I was announced as the one who would sneak into the caravan while my teammates provided a distraction.


Here's the thing. Ninja never actually dress like ninja. Oh, don't get me wrong, we were supposed to be stealthy (Naruto notwithstanding). My dress was close to brown, and Sasuke's clothing was dark navy blue and grey. Kakashi-sensei always wore dark clothes and a leaf green flak vest that blended in well with Konoha scenery. But the traditional picture of ninja? The tight black clothing and face coverings? Ninja only ever dressed like that when they needed to disguise themselves.

Like now, when we didn't want Lord Kura to know who was attacking his caravan.

"I feel stupid," Sasuke muttered through the cloth covering the lower part of his face, as we were ducked behind the rock the next morning, waiting for the caravan to start moving again.

"You look stupid, too," Naruto snickered.

"Not as stupid as you," Sasuke assured him, and Naruto stopped laughing.

"No fighting," Kakashi mandated sharply. "Not now. Just because samurai aren't ninja doesn't mean they're not dangerous. If you get lax, any samurai worth his salt will be able to kill you."

"I always just thought samurai were stupid thugs," I said in surprise, thinking of the Wave.

"Not these," Kakashi-sensei muttered. And when I looked at them, as they moved around the caravan, I could see what he meant. Straight backed and official, these samurai even dressed well, in traditional garb and with shining, sharp swords. They were not rurouni, rogue and master-less ninja, as the samurai Gatou had hired had been. And there, hidden among them through brightly painted curtains, were the Lord and his family, ensconced in silks, sitting in the vehicle. I could see several trunks above their heads: there was my target.

We waited, tense, until the caravan started its procession, waiting for the correct moment... Then my teammates leaped out from their hiding places! Sasuke, while in the air, started out with a burst of fire, and as the samurai cried out and fell back, the vehicle grinding to a halt and the bulls rearing, the fire blew neatly over the top of the procession, effectively scaring the shit out of everyone. Then one of the ninja multiplied into dozens of others, all engaging with the samurai at once in a swarm of devastating taijutsu attacks - there was Naruto. Kakashi-sensei was so good he almost didn't seem as impressive - samurai fell before him after barely having lifted their swords, without Kakashi looking like he ever had to do much of anything. Grown men were tossed like sacks of potatoes before him, occasionally with the help of an Earth spell, conveniently placed since we were around so much earth. I could pick out each of my team members by their style of fighting.

But now, in a less dramatic way, it was my turn.

I twitched a hand, almost lazily after all my recent training, and silently a genjutsu spell fell around me. Just me - not too strenuous. This entire mission should be easy, I told myself. Then I stood straight. If the disappearing genjutsu hadn't been at play, everyone would have been able to see my head over one of the big boulders. As it was, the fighters were so busy that none of them thought to look.

Keeping my feet silent, I ran around the edge of the battle, ducking underneath a couple of sword parries, leaping once through one of Kakashi-sensei's earth attacks. I went around, and around... until I got to the colorful silken hangings of Lord Kura's stopped vehicle.

Here would be the hard part.

I slipped inside, making sure to time it just right so it looked like Sasuke speeding by had made the wind flutter the hanging momentarily. Lord Kura and his wife and a little blonde girl who must have been his daughter were all cowering inside. My heart went out to them. They didn't see me, their eyes staring blindly at the space where I was. I climbed up on top of one of the trunks above them, slipping in and crouching in the tiny space, silently, and then watching them below me warily I administered three neat chops to the backs of their necks. Each immediately fell unconscious, slumping over.

That done, I clinically stepped back down, lying them down filed neatly side by side and then standing on the seat where they had been. I started taking suitcases down, trying to be as quiet as possible. I needed to see which one the scroll with the correct seal was in. This was another reason why the job was ideal for me: I could remember the seal in my mind perfectly.

I found the correct scroll in the third trunk. Lord Jye, however distasteful he seemed, had been right. I decided not to judge; I knew nothing about their rivalry and I didn't need to. (How strangely far I had come as a ninja.)

I tucked the scroll in my equipment pouch and began putting the suitcases back up on their stand. Taking the time to put the suitcases away: that was my first mistake.

I had let the genjutsu go temporarily, figuring I wouldn't need it while the Lord and his family were unconscious: that was my second.

I had supposed I would hear someone sneaking up behind me: that was my third.

A hand clapped itself over my mouth, tight and suffocating; I moved to break out of the grip and a blade was pressed to my neck. This was no ninja, but a samurai. I took advantage of my excellent chakra control and let a small burst of fire fly out of my hand and toward the adult male hand gripping the sword. (One good thing about my fire spell was that it didn't require a mouth to be able to use.) The sword moved reflexively, the man holding me jumping, and I took the opportunity of the blade moving away to break free of the man's grasp and run straight out back into the battle.

I knew I had only seconds; the man was chasing me. I looked around and saw that my nearest available teammate was Naruto. I took out the scroll and threw it to him. "Naruto!" Somehow, he looked around in time and, miraculously, he caught it.

My moment of triumph was muffled by a huge arc of pain making its way across my back; the cut from the sword went deep, diagonally from shoulder to hip. I collapsed to the ground under the weight, crying out, and I heard my teammates call out to me but they were still engaged with their own respective fighters. My assailant, whom I still hadn't seen, grabbed me by the shoulder; I made myself turn around and look into his face. He was surprisingly young, with very long, traditional dark hair; he went to grab me by my own and I made an eerie illusion appear before his eyes.

I knew what he saw as he flinched back, gasping. He saw my skin turning green and rotting, deep cuts and stitches forming across a gaping maw, my eyes sinking back into my head...

But I could only imagine. I couldn't see the illusion at all myself. And I used the opportunity his pause gave me to run through a set of hand seals.

The fire dragon would be too much. It was too big for this kind of environment. It could hurt one of my teammates. But that didn't mean I couldn't summon fire...

Fire arced outward from my hands, toward the samurai, suddenly breaking through the illusion and into reality. He couldn't tell the difference between the two for a moment, and perhaps that was why he didn't get back fast enough in time. At the last moment, he put his hands up to shield himself, and he screamed as the fire ate into his palms - a samurai who, now, couldn't hold a sword.

Satisfied with myself, I turned around and tried to run away, but the skin of my back was in so much pain, I ended up crawling away instead, my shirt soaked warm with blood, chaos going on around me... It was inevitable, and I could see it happening before it did. Just as I realized I couldn't run and had reached for my kunai pouch, my assailant walked up and kicked me in the stomach. While I was collapsed over on my side, he kicked me in the head, and I passed out.


I woke to the sight of a blank, grey stone wall before me. I was in bonds, tied up, in a dungeon like space. Kinky, said a sarcastic voice that sounded distinctly like Kakashi's in my head, and I wondered what was wrong with me. Maybe it was my head. My head pounded and my midsection was wound around with bandages. My back would scar. At least they'd given me first aid.

Whoever they were.

I assumed I had been taken prisoner by my assailant, who worked for Lord Kura. Sure enough, it wasn't long before the asshole himself walked into the room.

"How's your hands?" I asked before I could stop myself. I blamed the bad influence of the boys on my team.

The samurai glared at me. He was kind of hot. Too bad he was on the other side. And, you know, a good ten years older than me.

"You are a Konoha ninja," he said, and I realized ridiculously late that I was not in my supposedly ninja-like uniform anymore. I was in a simple white dress, my hair let loose around me. (They'd undressed me. How... uncomfortable.) "What are you doing attacking my lord?"

"What's your lord doing participating in court intrigue?" I asked in return. I shrugged philosophically. "That scroll wasn't originally his. Some client just paid us to steal it back. We do what we're requested to do."

The samurai looked away. "No sense of honor," he muttered.

"Hey, just because our honor's different from yours -" I began, annoyed.

"No. I am sworn to my lord. I am Ichirou -!"

"Thanks for telling me your name." My boys' voices kept playing in my head.

"Silence!" He probably thought I was being insincere. "I am sworn to my lord! I am an honorable samurai and a good fighter! And you - you ninja who everyone tout as so great - you are nothing but hired mercenaries." His face had twisted nastily. The guy seemed slightly unhinged.

I was tempted to remind him that his hands still looked burned and he probably couldn't use his sword anymore, but he had me trapped in here and I wasn't exactly a masochist.

"Where are we?" I asked.

He smirked in satisfaction. "In a base on the outskirts of the capital. A fortress, if you will. I have sent Lord Kura and the rest on ahead while I retrieve his... item.

"When I returned to the battle, your teammates were gone," he added at my surprised face. "They had just up and left the battle. It seems you gave them what they came here for. But I trust they will come to get you. And I will trade you for that scroll. Do you see? Surely they wouldn't abandon you. They must have that much honor... Mustn't they?

"Oh," he said then, smiling a slow, sadistic smile, "I see some uncertainty."

It wasn't that. I knew my teammates cared about me. It was just... I could just see them right now. Trying to put together a plan of attack, because no way were they just going to give up the scroll, and I could see them bickering and I could just imagine the plan falling through. Something horrible happening.

And deep down in the back of my mind, I could even picture them never coming back to get me at all. I could picture my ninja life ending up like this - a prisoner of an enemy, with nothing more to show for her ninja experience than a pair of burned hands, having successfully helped in the completion of one mission only to have herself sacrificed during it.


The idea of being a failure, that was what galvanized me. As soon as Ichirou had finished crowing and left the room, I set to work freeing myself from my bonds - a basic Academy skill. Had Ichirou ever fought ninja before?

I stood, slowly, but I could. It moved my burning scar uncomfortably. I went across the room to the door, but it was locked, and from the outside too. Pushing my hair out of my eyes, I looked up and around for a moment - and that was when I spotted it. The ventilation shaft.

I couldn't rely on some unreliable men to get me out of here. I had to get myself out.

Channeling chakra into my feet, I walked sideways up the wall and then onto the ceiling, the blood rushing unpleasantly to my pounding head. The room spun for a moment, and to combat this I opened the vent and crawled up into the shaft, cramming myself into the tiny space. Then, on my hands and knees, infinitely glad I wasn't claustrophobic, I crawled through the shaft and on through the rooms, looking down as I passed different ones. The prisoner's room seemed to be on a ground floor. There were neat little vases everywhere outside, and hanging tapestries. It was a vast place, the stone as far apart as could be from the atmosphere that the decorations were trying to create.

It was while I was sneaking out that the chaos started again below me. The chaos that signaled my teammates.

It was faint at first. Some strange crashing and shouting, echoing up through the vent toward me from a far distance away. But then I heard a shout and a laugh, and I smiled, my heart lifting.

As Ichirou and some other samurai ran toward the door, it burst open. Naruto Kage Bunshin swarmed the place, and the swords sliced right through them, only for the samurai to realize too late that the Kage Bunshin had left explosive tags on the blades. Then there were huge, fiery booms and shrapnel went everywhere, and several men were left moaning off to the side with various pieces of hot metal sticking out of various parts of their body.

Into this atmosphere of smoke and screaming, looking calm and vaguely pleased with themselves, walked my teammates. "Nicely done, Naruto," said Kakashi.

Naruto smiled and shrugged.

Some more samurai came running down from a side corridor. Sasuke let out a flurry of kunai and pinned them to the wall behind them by their large, billowing clothes.

Ichirou, one of the only ones who had leaped backward instead of forward to avoid the blaze, began indignantly, "What do you think you're doing! I have your teammate, you kn -!"

That was when I jumped from the shaft and straight onto Ichirou's head. He crumpled there below my feet. "No, you don't," I finished triumphantly.

And then I looked up and beamed and ran over to my teammates. Naruto hugged me fiercely. "You're okay!" That cry of relief, to my surprise, came from Sasuke. I stood back, and I realized they were all together and smiling at me, and none of them seemed to be arguing or avoiding me anymore at all. They were all just too glad I was okay, too busy being happy they'd found me.

I felt my eyes burn for a moment and I looked away. Alarm passed across their faces.

"Hey, Sakura -"

"What's wrong -"

"I've just - I'm so sorry I let myself be caught by such an idiot," I said instead of telling the truth. That they had come for me after all and had come together okay in the end when it really mattered.

Kakashi and Sasuke seemed amused and Naruto let out a soft laugh. "We forgive you," said Sasuke dryly. "Just don't do it again." This part was sincere.

"Let's get out of here," I said. Then I turned to Naruto. "Still have the scroll?"

He took it out of his own equipment pouch and held it up triumphantly. "Yup, it's all right here -!"

And then a sword flashed out and cut at our legs and Naruto and I jumped, lost our footing, and fell in one swoop. Ichirou was not as unconscious as we had thought. He grabbed the scroll and began running back down the hall with it.

"He's not even going to try to fight?" Kakashi asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I burned his hands," I said, standing, flushed. "I don't think he can."

"Ah," said Kakashi, and he flashed through the hand seals and a wall of earth burst up through the stone, blocking Ichirou's way. But Ichirou was faster than we'd given him credit for. He leaped straight over the wall as it was forming, and continued running.

Kakashi sighed, as if tired. He'd been doing that a lot lately. "Shit," he said in exasperation. "Let's go after him." This was getting annoying.

I was pulled up onto Kakashi's back in a piggy back ride, because I didn't have any shoes and he was the tallest and strongest, and then we took off running at enormously high speeds after Ichirou. We were faster than him, but he knew the confusing maze of the fortress better than us. He slid through hidden panels in the walls and down side corridors, before heading out onto open land and straight toward the capital in the distance.

We chased him down and into the capital, and - "Of course," Naruto cried. "Of course there would be a festival today!" There were stalls erected and crowds of people in fantastic costumes on the busy streets of the capital with their buildings full of traditional, gold, pointed eaves and tiled roofs. Ichirou quickly disappeared into the crowd, so Kakashi jumped up onto a roof and sped after him, and Naruto and Sasuke followed suit.

We quickly caught up with him, running parallel through the crowds. "We should take aim!" Naruto called.

"We don't want to create wide spread panic!" said Kakashi.

"That's what he's counting on!" I said. "That's why he won't leave the streets! We can't let him get to Lord Kura with that scroll!"

So Naruto did something simple. He created a Kage Bunshin, and the Kage Bunshin said, "Henge!" It transformed into a copy of an innocuous looking redheaded woman in traditional purple garb.

The Bunshin slid off the rooftop and into the crowd, following not Ichirou, who she couldn't see, but Naruto, who she could sense. Pretty soon, walking fast, the woman caught up to Ichirou. She walked up beside him and pushed him into an alleyway.

"Sasuke!" Naruto called, because Sasuke was the better aim, and he nodded. Sasuke took aim and the kunai arced, over the heads of the unsuspecting crowd, into the alleyway, to pin Ichirou there against the wall by his loose samurai shirt.

And then Kakashi let me off onto the rooftop and he leaped - straight across the street and into the alleyway, kicking out at Ichirou on his way down. Ichirou went to grab Kakashi's foot, Kakashi dodged and landed on his feet, and the two grappled with each other for a moment. But of course, in hand to hand, Kakashi would always be faster. He knocked Ichirou out and by the time we got there, this time he was tying Ichirou up for good measure.

He took out the scroll in satisfaction and put it in his equipment pouch. "They'll find him eventually," Sensei said, turning to us. "We should get out of here." No one argued.

We were very focused and together as we ran back out of the capital and across the fields to that place behind the boulders where our packs had been left. I finally got back into my kunoichi garb, tied my hair back up in its bun, and then it was another harsh run back to Konoha, via a different route this time. We didn't want someone from Lord Kura's party to find us and made sure to cover our tracks.

We made it back to Konoha the next night, breathing heavily and sweating like pigs, frankly. I felt like such a boy.

"Call Lord Jye," Kakashi barked harshly to the ninja in the night shift mission assignments room, in a 'don't fuck with me' tone of voice. Someone stood up with wide eyes and went to go send for the client, who was still in Konoha with the Daimyo.

When we handed Lord Jye the scroll, the first small but genuine smile I'd seen from him lit his face. "Well," he said, "perhaps there is something to this ninja thing after all." We were all kind of exasperated, after all that work. Perhaps there is something to this ninja thing after all. I wondered if Ichirou would say the same.

Later, I would get home. Later, I would take a warm bath and rub soothing ointment on the scar on my back and curl up on my bed in my favorite set of soft pajamas while my mother served me soup and fussed over me worriedly.

But for now, I just enjoyed the sense of togetherness I felt with my team. And from then on, Sasuke, Naruto, Kakashi-sensei, and I had a firm respect for each other. We were good friends.